Mount Ayr, IA
How exposed is Mount Ayr to wildfire?
Mount Ayr sits at the 71st percentile nationally for wildfire risk to structures — well above the national norm for wildfire risk — per USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model, built from its 1,228 counted buildings, not vegetation cover alone. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Mount Ayr at the 72nd national percentile — 1 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Where Mount Ayr's buildings actually sit
USFS classifies 72.3% of Mount Ayr's buildings as Minimal exposure, the largest of the three zones here by a wide margin over 27.4% Direct and 0.3% Indirect — a landscape-level risk rather than a building-by-building one.
Mount Ayr against the rest of the country
Compare Mount Ayr's two percentiles: 94th within Iowa, only 71st nationally — a gap of 24 points that marks it as unusually exposed for its own state. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Mount Ayr ranks 9,297 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 10,483 by building count (1 is largest). Within Iowa alone, it ranks 62 of 1,017 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Iowa on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Mount Ayr
Mount Ayr's high rating (71st 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.
What would actually reduce this score
Mount Ayr's 72.3% Minimal-exposure share means structure-level hardening matters less here than it would elsewhere — still worth the low-cost basics, per the home-hardening guide.
Where Mount Ayr's figures come from
Mount Ayr's 71st-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Mount Ayr's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.