Oskaloosa, IA
Oskaloosa wildfire risk explained
USFS scores Oskaloosa at the 51st national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (modestly above the national average for wildfire risk), a figure built from 5,809 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Oskaloosa at the 53rd national percentile — 2 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Only 5.5% of Oskaloosa's 5,809 buildings carry Direct exposure and 0% carry Indirect; the remaining 94.5% are Minimal, which shifts the risk driving this page's score toward the surrounding landscape rather than any one structure. At 5,809 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Oskaloosa against the rest of the country
Oskaloosa's 71st-percentile standing inside Iowa outpaces its 51st national percentile — this is a hotter spot than most of its own state, even though the state as a whole runs cooler nationally. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Oskaloosa ranks 15,311 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 2,969 by building count (1 is largest). Within Iowa alone, it ranks 301 of 1,017 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Iowa on its state page.
Oskaloosa and the insurance market
Oskaloosa's elevated rating (51st percentile nationally) sits outside the range where wildfire risk alone reshapes an insurance market — still, a homeowner here loses nothing by comparing rates.
Hardening a home in Oskaloosa
With 94.5% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, Oskaloosa gets less benefit from structure hardening than a Direct- or Indirect-dominant place would — the home-hardening guide explains why the zone matters.
More on how this number was built
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 5,809 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Oskaloosa. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Oskaloosa, see the exposure-zones guide.