Orchard, IA
How exposed is Orchard to wildfire?
USFS scores Orchard at the 27th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range), a figure built from 68 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Orchard at the 26th national percentile — 1 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Where Orchard's buildings actually sit
72.1% of Orchard's 68 buildings sit in USFS's Minimal exposure zone, with only 27.9% rated Direct — risk here comes from regional burn probability more than proximity to burnable vegetation at the structure itself.
Where Orchard ranks
There's little gap between Orchard's 27th national percentile and its 41st percentile inside Iowa, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Orchard ranks 23,126 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 30,351 by building count (1 is largest). Within Iowa alone, it ranks 603 of 1,017 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Iowa on its state page.
Orchard and the insurance market
Orchard's moderate wildfire rating (27th 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.
Hardening a home in Orchard
With 72.1% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, Orchard gets less benefit from structure hardening than a Direct- or Indirect-dominant place would — the home-hardening guide explains why the zone matters.
Where Orchard's figures come from
Orchard's 27th-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 Orchard's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.