Martelle, IA
Martelle, IA's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
Martelle's 174 buildings earn a 5th-percentile wildfire-risk score nationally under USFS's model — among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Martelle at the 5th national percentile — 0 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Where Martelle's buildings actually sit
Martelle rates 84.5% Minimal exposure against just 15.5% Direct and 0% Indirect — of 174 buildings counted, few sit close enough to burnable vegetation for USFS to flag them individually.
Martelle against the rest of the country
There's little gap between Martelle's 5th national percentile and its 12th percentile inside Iowa, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Martelle ranks 29,908 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 25,856 by building count (1 is largest). Within Iowa alone, it ranks 900 of 1,017 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Iowa on its state page.
Martelle and the insurance market
Martelle's low rating (5th percentile nationally) sits outside the range where wildfire risk alone reshapes an insurance market — still, a homeowner here loses nothing by comparing rates.
Hardening a home in Martelle
Even with 84.5% of Martelle 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
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 174 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Martelle. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Martelle, see the exposure-zones guide.