Melvin, IA
Melvin wildfire risk explained
USFS scores Melvin at the 5th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally), a figure built from 205 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Melvin at the 4th percentile, close to its 5th-percentile risk score.
Where Melvin's buildings actually sit
Most of Melvin's buildings (78.1% of 205) 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 Melvin compares
Melvin scores 5th nationally and 10th within Iowa — close enough that its state context doesn't change the picture the national number already gives. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Melvin ranks 30,005 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 24,658 by building count (1 is largest). Within Iowa alone, it ranks 909 of 1,017 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Iowa on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Melvin
Melvin'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 Melvin
With 78.1% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, Melvin gets less benefit from structure hardening than a Direct- or Indirect-dominant place would — the home-hardening guide explains why the zone matters.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Melvin's 30,005-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Melvin, see the exposure-zones guide.