Lakeside, IA
How exposed is Lakeside to wildfire?
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Lakeside at the 11th national percentile for risk to structures, among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally — a score built from 294 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 Lakeside at the 10th percentile, close to its 11th-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
85.7% of Lakeside's 294 buildings sit in USFS's Minimal exposure zone, with only 14.3% rated Direct — risk here comes from regional burn probability more than proximity to burnable vegetation at the structure itself.
Lakeside against the rest of the country
There's little gap between Lakeside's 11th national percentile and its 21st percentile inside Iowa, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Lakeside ranks 28,012 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 21,786 by building count (1 is largest). Within Iowa alone, it ranks 807 of 1,017 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Iowa on its state page.
Lakeside and the insurance market
Lakeside's low wildfire rating (11th 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
Lakeside's 85.7% 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 Lakeside's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Lakeside's 28,012-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Lakeside's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.