West Des Moines, IA
West Des Moines, IA's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
West Des Moines's 21,506 buildings earn a 54th-percentile wildfire-risk score nationally under USFS's model — modestly above the national average for wildfire risk. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, West Des Moines's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 56th percentile nationally.
West Des Moines's building exposure, zone by zone
Only 13.7% of West Des Moines's 21,506 buildings carry Direct exposure and 0.8% carry Indirect; the remaining 85.5% are Minimal, which shifts the risk driving this page's score toward the surrounding landscape rather than any one structure. At 21,506 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
West Des Moines against the rest of the country
Within Iowa, West Des Moines ranks higher (74th percentile) than it does nationally (54th) — one of the more fire-exposed places in a state that, overall, scores lower than that. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, West Des Moines ranks 14,619 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 644 by building count (1 is largest). Within Iowa alone, it ranks 271 of 1,017 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Iowa on its state page.
West Des Moines and the insurance market
West Des Moines's elevated wildfire rating (54th 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.
What would actually reduce this score
With 85.5% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, West Des Moines gets less benefit from structure hardening than a Direct- or Indirect-dominant place would — the home-hardening guide explains why the zone matters.
Where West Des Moines's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind West Des Moines's 14,619-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what West Des Moines's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.