Ottumwa, IA
How exposed is Ottumwa to wildfire?
USFS scores Ottumwa at the 69th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (well above the national norm for wildfire risk), a figure built from 14,475 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Ottumwa at the 71st percentile, close to its 69th-percentile risk score.
Ottumwa's building exposure, zone by zone
USFS classifies 56.6% of Ottumwa's buildings as Minimal exposure, the largest of the three zones here by a wide margin over 18.8% Direct and 24.6% Indirect — a landscape-level risk rather than a building-by-building one. At 14,475 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
How Ottumwa compares
Ottumwa's 93rd-percentile standing inside Iowa outpaces its 69th 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, Ottumwa ranks 9,927 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 1,036 by building count (1 is largest). Within Iowa alone, it ranks 77 of 1,017 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Iowa on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Ottumwa
Ottumwa's high rating (69th percentile) puts it among the places where the national carrier-pullback trend is most relevant — not a guarantee of a coverage problem, but a reason to shop rather than assume.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
With 56.6% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, Ottumwa gets less benefit from structure hardening than a Direct- or Indirect-dominant place would — the home-hardening guide explains why the zone matters.
Where Ottumwa's figures come from
Ottumwa's 69th-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 Ottumwa's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.