Pella, IA
Pella wildfire risk explained
Pella sits at the 52nd percentile nationally for wildfire risk to structures — modestly above the national average for wildfire risk — per USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model, built from its 4,224 counted buildings, not vegetation cover alone. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Pella at the 53rd percentile, close to its 52nd-percentile risk score.
Pella's building exposure, zone by zone
USFS classifies 88.2% of Pella's buildings as Minimal exposure, the largest of the three zones here by a wide margin over 11.8% Direct and 0% Indirect — a landscape-level risk rather than a building-by-building one.
How Pella compares
Compare Pella's two percentiles: 71st within Iowa, only 52nd nationally — a gap of 19 points that marks it as unusually exposed for its own state. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Pella ranks 15,218 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 4,035 by building count (1 is largest). Within Iowa alone, it ranks 295 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
At the 52nd national percentile, Pella rates elevated for wildfire risk — well short of the threshold where insurers have been withdrawing coverage, though comparing a quote costs nothing either way.
Hardening a home in Pella
Pella's 88.2% 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
Pella's 52nd-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 Pella, see the exposure-zones guide.