La Motte, IA
How exposed is La Motte to wildfire?
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts La Motte at the 34th national percentile for risk to structures, close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range — a score built from 209 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 La Motte at the 35th percentile, close to its 34th-percentile risk score.
La Motte's building exposure, zone by zone
Most of La Motte's buildings (82.3% of 209) 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.
La Motte against the rest of the country
There's little gap between La Motte's 34th national percentile and its 49th percentile inside Iowa, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, La Motte ranks 20,761 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 24,508 by building count (1 is largest). Within Iowa alone, it ranks 521 of 1,017 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Iowa on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
La Motte's moderate wildfire rating (34th 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.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Even with 82.3% of La Motte outside USFS's Direct and Indirect zones, basic hardening — gutter maintenance, ember-resistant vents — is inexpensive relative to the regional burn-probability risk noted above. Details in the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind La Motte's 20,761-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond La Motte, see the exposure-zones guide.