Iron Mountain Lake, MO
Iron Mountain Lake wildfire risk explained
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Iron Mountain Lake at the 69th national percentile for risk to structures, well above the national norm for wildfire risk — a score built from 443 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Iron Mountain Lake at the 70th percentile, close to its 69th-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
USFS classifies 93.5% of Iron Mountain Lake's buildings as Direct exposure, higher than its 6.3% Indirect share and far above its 0.2% Minimal share — a profile where 414 structures sit close enough to vegetation that lot clearing matters most.
Where Iron Mountain Lake ranks
Iron Mountain Lake's risk sits at a similar level relative to Missouri (80th percentile statewide) as it does nationally (69th) — this place isn't unusual for its own state either way. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Iron Mountain Lake ranks 9,800 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 18,398 by building count (1 is largest). Within Missouri alone, it ranks 218 of 1,062 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Missouri on its state page.
Iron Mountain Lake and the insurance market
Iron Mountain Lake's 69th-percentile, high rating is the kind of score behind a broader national pattern: insurers pulling back from the highest wildfire-risk markets, non-renewing or declining new policies outright, most visibly in California. Shopping around, not assuming automatic renewal, tends to matter here.
Hardening a home in Iron Mountain Lake
Because Direct exposure dominates in Iron Mountain Lake (93.5%), the highest-leverage fix is defensible space, not roofing or vents alone — covered in the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Iron Mountain Lake's 69th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Iron Mountain Lake, see the exposure-zones guide.