Milton, IA
How exposed is Milton to wildfire?
USFS scores Milton at the 67th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (well above the national norm for wildfire risk), a figure built from 451 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Milton at the 69th national percentile — 2 points above 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 Milton's buildings (57.7%) sit in the Indirect zone, where wind-blown embers rather than flame front are the mechanism USFS is scoring — ember-resistant vents and non-combustible roofing are the interventions this pattern favors, more than defensible space alone.
Milton against the rest of the country
Compare Milton's two percentiles: 91st within Iowa, only 67th nationally — a gap of 24 points that marks it as unusually exposed for its own state. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Milton ranks 10,395 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 18,254 by building count (1 is largest). Within Iowa alone, it ranks 92 of 1,017 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Iowa on its state page.
Milton and the insurance market
Milton's high rating (67th percentile) puts it among the places where the national carrier-pullback trend is most relevant — not a guarantee of a coverage problem, but a reason to shop rather than assume.
Hardening a home in Milton
Because 57.7% of Milton's buildings sit in the Indirect zone, sealing the ember pathway (vents, roofing, gutters) is the intervention this page's data actually supports — see the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Milton's 10,395-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Milton, see the exposure-zones guide.