Mystic, IA
How exposed is Mystic to wildfire?
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Mystic at the 71st national percentile for risk to structures, well above the national norm for wildfire risk — a score built from 359 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Mystic at the 73rd percentile, close to its 71st-percentile risk score.
Mystic's building exposure, zone by zone
359 buildings are counted in Mystic, and 71.6% of them sit in USFS's Direct exposure zone — flame contact, not just ember cast, is the live possibility for most of them, against 0% rated Minimal.
Where Mystic ranks
Compare Mystic's two percentiles: 95th 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, Mystic ranks 9,168 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 20,082 by building count (1 is largest). Within Iowa alone, it ranks 57 of 1,017 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Iowa on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Mystic
Mystic's 71st-percentile, high rating is the kind of score behind a broader national pattern: insurers pulling back from the highest wildfire-risk markets, non-renewing or declining new policies outright, most visibly in California. Shopping around, not assuming automatic renewal, tends to matter here.
What would actually reduce this score
With 71.6% of Mystic in Direct exposure, defensible-space clearing and ember-resistant construction (vents, Class-A roofing) address the exposure this page's own numbers describe, not a generic checklist. See the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Mystic's 71st-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Mystic, see the exposure-zones guide.