Swan, IA
Swan, IA's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
Out of every US place USFS scores, Swan lands at the 68th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — well above the national norm for wildfire risk — a figure built from its 64 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Swan's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 66th percentile nationally.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
USFS classifies 73.4% of Swan's buildings as Direct exposure, higher than its 26.6% Indirect share and far above its 0% Minimal share — a profile where 47 structures sit close enough to vegetation that lot clearing matters most.
Swan against the rest of the country
Compare Swan's two percentiles: 92nd within Iowa, only 68th nationally — a gap of 24 points that marks it as unusually exposed for its own state. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Swan ranks 10,081 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 30,503 by building count (1 is largest). Within Iowa alone, it ranks 86 of 1,017 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Iowa on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Swan
Swan's 68th-percentile, 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 Swan
Swan's 73.4% Direct-exposure share means lot clearing around the structure typically outweighs any single material upgrade here. The home-hardening guide ranks the options for a place shaped like this.
More on how this number was built
Swan's 68th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Swan, see the exposure-zones guide.