St. Joseph, IA
How exposed is St. Joseph to wildfire?
Out of every US place USFS scores, St. Joseph lands at the 20th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range — a figure built from its 50 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks St. Joseph at the 17th national percentile — 3 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Where St. Joseph's buildings actually sit
Only 18% of St. Joseph's 50 buildings carry Direct exposure and 0% carry Indirect; the remaining 82% are Minimal, which shifts the risk driving this page's score toward the surrounding landscape rather than any one structure.
Where St. Joseph ranks
There's little gap between St. Joseph's 20th national percentile and its 33rd percentile inside Iowa, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, St. Joseph ranks 25,083 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 30,929 by building count (1 is largest). Within Iowa alone, it ranks 682 of 1,017 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Iowa on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in St. Joseph
St. Joseph's moderate wildfire rating (20th 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.
Hardening a home in St. Joseph
St. Joseph's 82% 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
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 50 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for St. Joseph. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond St. Joseph, see the exposure-zones guide.