Manson, IA
How exposed is Manson to wildfire?
Out of every US place USFS scores, Manson lands at the 3rd percentile for wildfire risk to structures — among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally — a figure built from its 1,060 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Manson at the 3rd national percentile — 0 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Most of Manson's buildings (84.8% of 1,060) 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.
How Manson compares
There's little gap between Manson's 3rd national percentile and its 5th percentile inside Iowa, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Manson ranks 30,577 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 11,518 by building count (1 is largest). Within Iowa alone, it ranks 963 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
Manson's low wildfire rating (3rd 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 Manson
Even with 84.8% of Manson 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 Manson's 30,577-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Manson, see the exposure-zones guide.