Waukee, IA
How exposed is Waukee to wildfire?
Out of every US place USFS scores, Waukee lands at the 43rd percentile for wildfire risk to structures — modestly above the national average for wildfire risk — a figure built from its 7,514 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Waukee at the 44th national percentile — 1 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Most of Waukee's buildings (87% of 7,514) fall outside USFS's Direct and Indirect zones entirely — that doesn't zero out the score above, it means the risk is regional, not structure-by-structure. At 7,514 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Waukee against the rest of the country
Within Iowa, Waukee ranks higher (59th percentile) than it does nationally (43rd) — one of the more fire-exposed places in a state that, overall, scores lower than that. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Waukee ranks 18,022 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 2,277 by building count (1 is largest). Within Iowa alone, it ranks 416 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 43rd national percentile, Waukee rates elevated for wildfire risk — well short of the threshold where insurers have been withdrawing coverage, though comparing a quote costs nothing either way.
What would actually reduce this score
Even with 87% of Waukee 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.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Waukee's 18,022-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Waukee, see the exposure-zones guide.