Olds, IA
Olds wildfire risk explained
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Olds at the 6th national percentile for risk to structures, among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally — a score built from 174 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Olds's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 6th percentile nationally.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Olds rates 93.1% Minimal exposure against just 6.9% Direct and 0% Indirect — of 174 buildings counted, few sit close enough to burnable vegetation for USFS to flag them individually.
How Olds compares
Olds scores 6th nationally and 13th 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, Olds ranks 29,720 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 25,857 by building count (1 is largest). Within Iowa alone, it ranks 886 of 1,017 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Iowa on its state page.
Olds and the insurance market
Olds's low wildfire rating (6th 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 93.1% of Olds 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
Olds's 6th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Olds, see the exposure-zones guide.