Leighton, IA
How exposed is Leighton to wildfire?
Leighton sits at the 20th percentile nationally for wildfire risk to structures — close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range — per USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model, built from its 119 counted buildings, not vegetation cover alone. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Leighton's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 20th percentile nationally.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
86.6% of Leighton's 119 buildings sit in USFS's Minimal exposure zone, with only 13.5% rated Direct — risk here comes from regional burn probability more than proximity to burnable vegetation at the structure itself.
How Leighton compares
There's little gap between Leighton's 20th national percentile and its 33rd percentile inside Iowa, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Leighton ranks 25,082 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 28,191 by building count (1 is largest). Within Iowa alone, it ranks 681 of 1,017 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Iowa on its state page.
Leighton and the insurance market
Leighton's moderate wildfire rating (20th 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
Leighton'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
Leighton's 20th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Leighton, see the exposure-zones guide.