Palmer, IA
Palmer wildfire risk explained
USFS scores Palmer at the 0th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally), a figure built from 177 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Palmer's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 0th percentile nationally.
Where Palmer's buildings actually sit
USFS classifies 98.3% of Palmer's buildings as Minimal exposure, the largest of the three zones here by a wide margin over 1.7% Direct and 0% Indirect — a landscape-level risk rather than a building-by-building one.
How Palmer compares
There's little gap between Palmer's 0th national percentile and its 0th percentile inside Iowa, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Palmer ranks 31,402 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 25,748 by building count (1 is largest). Within Iowa alone, it ranks 1,017 of 1,017 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Iowa on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Palmer
Palmer's low wildfire rating (0th 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
Palmer's 98.3% Minimal-exposure share means structure-level hardening matters less here than it would elsewhere — still worth the low-cost basics, per the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Palmer's 0th-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 Palmer, see the exposure-zones guide.