Waterloo, IA
How exposed is Waterloo to wildfire?
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Waterloo at the 32nd national percentile for risk to structures, close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range — a score built from 34,799 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Waterloo at the 33rd percentile, close to its 32nd-percentile risk score.
Where Waterloo's buildings actually sit
Only 8.3% of Waterloo's 34,799 buildings carry Direct exposure and 0% carry Indirect; the remaining 91.7% are Minimal, which shifts the risk driving this page's score toward the surrounding landscape rather than any one structure. At 34,799 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
How Waterloo compares
Waterloo's risk sits at a similar level relative to Iowa (47th percentile statewide) as it does nationally (32nd) — this place isn't unusual for its own state either way. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Waterloo ranks 21,359 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 312 by building count (1 is largest). Within Iowa alone, it ranks 539 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 32nd national percentile, Waterloo rates moderate 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 Waterloo
With 91.7% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, Waterloo gets less benefit from structure hardening than a Direct- or Indirect-dominant place would — the home-hardening guide explains why the zone matters.
Where Waterloo's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Waterloo's 21,359-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Waterloo's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.