Marengo, IA
How exposed is Marengo to wildfire?
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Marengo at the 74th national percentile for risk to structures, well above the national norm for wildfire risk — a score built from 1,486 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Marengo's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 75th percentile nationally.
Where Marengo's buildings actually sit
USFS puts 93.9% of Marengo's 1,486 buildings in the Indirect exposure zone, versus 5.9% Direct and 0.1% Minimal — a place where the fire doesn't need to reach the structure directly for embers to.
Marengo against the rest of the country
Compare Marengo's two percentiles: 97th within Iowa, only 74th nationally — a gap of 23 points that marks it as unusually exposed for its own state. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Marengo ranks 8,095 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 9,223 by building count (1 is largest). Within Iowa alone, it ranks 29 of 1,017 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Iowa on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Marengo
Marengo's 74th-percentile, high rating is the kind of score behind a broader national pattern: insurers pulling back from the highest wildfire-risk markets, non-renewing or declining new policies outright, most visibly in California. Shopping around, not assuming automatic renewal, tends to matter here.
What would actually reduce this score
With ember exposure the dominant pattern in Marengo (93.9% Indirect), vent screens and roofing material tend to matter more than lot clearing alone. The home-hardening guide covers both.
More on how this number was built
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 1,486 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Marengo. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Marengo, see the exposure-zones guide.