Sergeant Bluff, IA
How exposed is Sergeant Bluff to wildfire?
Sergeant Bluff's 1,840 buildings earn a 82nd-percentile wildfire-risk score nationally under USFS's model — in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Sergeant Bluff at the 81st percentile, close to its 82nd-percentile risk score.
Sergeant Bluff's building exposure, zone by zone
Sergeant Bluff rates 96% Minimal exposure against just 4% Direct and 0% Indirect — of 1,840 buildings counted, few sit close enough to burnable vegetation for USFS to flag them individually.
Sergeant Bluff against the rest of the country
Within Iowa, Sergeant Bluff ranks higher (99th percentile) than it does nationally (82nd) — one of the more fire-exposed places in a state that, overall, scores lower than that. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Sergeant Bluff ranks 5,574 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 7,952 by building count (1 is largest). Within Iowa alone, it ranks 8 of 1,017 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Iowa on its state page.
Sergeant Bluff and the insurance market
Sergeant Bluff's 82nd-percentile, very high rating is the kind of score behind a broader national pattern: insurers pulling back from the highest wildfire-risk markets, non-renewing or declining new policies outright, most visibly in California. Shopping around, not assuming automatic renewal, tends to matter here.
Hardening a home in Sergeant Bluff
Even with 96% of Sergeant Bluff 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.
Where Sergeant Bluff's figures come from
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 1,840 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Sergeant Bluff. The exposure-zones guide covers what Sergeant Bluff's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.