Ossian, IA
Ossian, IA's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Ossian at the 5th national percentile for risk to structures, among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally — a score built from 498 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 Ossian at the 5th percentile, close to its 5th-percentile risk score.
Where Ossian's buildings actually sit
USFS classifies 96.6% of Ossian's buildings as Minimal exposure, the largest of the three zones here by a wide margin over 3.4% Direct and 0% Indirect — a landscape-level risk rather than a building-by-building one.
How Ossian compares
There's little gap between Ossian's 5th national percentile and its 10th percentile inside Iowa, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Ossian ranks 30,105 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 17,386 by building count (1 is largest). Within Iowa alone, it ranks 916 of 1,017 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Iowa on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Ossian's low wildfire rating (5th 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.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Even with 96.6% of Ossian 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
Ossian's 5th-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 Ossian, see the exposure-zones guide.