Lake Mills, IA
How exposed is Lake Mills to wildfire?
Lake Mills's 1,118 buildings earn a 33rd-percentile wildfire-risk score nationally under USFS's model — close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Lake Mills at the 30th percentile, close to its 33rd-percentile risk score.
Where Lake Mills's buildings actually sit
Lake Mills rates 87.9% Minimal exposure against just 12.1% Direct and 0% Indirect — of 1,118 buildings counted, few sit close enough to burnable vegetation for USFS to flag them individually.
Lake Mills against the rest of the country
There's little gap between Lake Mills's 33rd national percentile and its 48th percentile inside Iowa, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Lake Mills ranks 21,106 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 11,163 by building count (1 is largest). Within Iowa alone, it ranks 531 of 1,017 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Iowa on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Lake Mills
Lake Mills's moderate wildfire rating (33rd 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 Lake Mills
Even with 87.9% of Lake Mills 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.
Where Lake Mills's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Lake Mills's 21,106-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Lake Mills's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.