Indianola, IA
Indianola wildfire risk explained
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Indianola at the 58th national percentile for risk to structures, modestly above the national average for wildfire risk — a score built from 5,832 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Indianola at the 60th national percentile — 2 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Indianola's building exposure, zone by zone
Only 21.8% of Indianola's 5,832 buildings carry Direct exposure and 17.3% carry Indirect; the remaining 60.9% are Minimal, which shifts the risk driving this page's score toward the surrounding landscape rather than any one structure. At 5,832 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Indianola against the rest of the country
Within Iowa, Indianola ranks higher (81st percentile) than it does nationally (58th) — one of the more fire-exposed places in a state that, overall, scores lower than that. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Indianola ranks 13,171 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 2,957 by building count (1 is largest). Within Iowa alone, it ranks 195 of 1,017 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Iowa on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Indianola
Indianola's elevated rating (58th percentile nationally) sits outside the range where wildfire risk alone reshapes an insurance market — still, a homeowner here loses nothing by comparing rates.
What would actually reduce this score
Indianola's 60.9% Minimal-exposure share means structure-level hardening matters less here than it would elsewhere — still worth the low-cost basics, per the home-hardening guide.
Where Indianola's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Indianola's 13,171-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Indianola's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.