Iowa City, IA
Iowa City wildfire risk explained
Iowa City sits at the 55th percentile nationally for wildfire risk to structures — modestly above the national average for wildfire risk — per USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model, built from its 19,940 counted buildings, not vegetation cover alone. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Iowa City at the 57th national percentile — 2 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Most of Iowa City's buildings (86.6% of 19,940) fall outside USFS's Direct and Indirect zones entirely — that doesn't zero out the score above, it means the risk is regional, not structure-by-structure. At 19,940 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
How Iowa City compares
Compare Iowa City's two percentiles: 75th within Iowa, only 55th nationally — a gap of 20 points that marks it as unusually exposed for its own state. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Iowa City ranks 14,181 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 706 by building count (1 is largest). Within Iowa alone, it ranks 255 of 1,017 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Iowa on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Iowa City
Iowa City's elevated wildfire rating (55th percentile) isn't the kind of score driving the carrier pullback making news in the highest-risk Western markets — but a standard homeowners quote is still worth comparing on its own terms.
Hardening a home in Iowa City
Iowa City's 86.6% 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.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Iowa City's 14,181-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Iowa City, see the exposure-zones guide.