Muscatine, IA
Muscatine wildfire risk explained
USFS scores Muscatine at the 53rd national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (modestly above the national average for wildfire risk), a figure built from 11,295 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Muscatine's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 55th percentile nationally.
Where Muscatine's buildings actually sit
Most of Muscatine's buildings (90.8% of 11,295) 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. At 11,295 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Where Muscatine ranks
Compare Muscatine's two percentiles: 73rd within Iowa, only 53rd nationally — a gap of 20 points that marks it as unusually exposed for its own state. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Muscatine ranks 14,682 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 1,401 by building count (1 is largest). Within Iowa alone, it ranks 273 of 1,017 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Iowa on its state page.
Muscatine and the insurance market
Muscatine's elevated wildfire rating (53rd percentile) isn't the kind of score driving the carrier pullback making news in the highest-risk Western markets — but a standard homeowners quote is still worth comparing on its own terms.
What would actually reduce this score
Even with 90.8% of Muscatine 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 11,295 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Muscatine. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Muscatine, see the exposure-zones guide.