Winthrop, IA
Winthrop wildfire risk explained
Out of every US place USFS scores, Winthrop lands at the 4th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally — a figure built from its 517 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Winthrop at the 4th national percentile — 0 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Winthrop's building exposure, zone by zone
Winthrop rates 91.5% Minimal exposure against just 8.5% Direct and 0% Indirect — of 517 buildings counted, few sit close enough to burnable vegetation for USFS to flag them individually.
How Winthrop compares
Winthrop's risk sits at a similar level relative to Iowa (9th percentile statewide) as it does nationally (4th) — this place isn't unusual for its own state either way. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Winthrop ranks 30,198 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 17,071 by building count (1 is largest). Within Iowa alone, it ranks 929 of 1,017 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Iowa on its state page.
Winthrop and the insurance market
Winthrop's low wildfire rating (4th 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 Winthrop
Even with 91.5% of Winthrop 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
Winthrop's 4th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Winthrop, see the exposure-zones guide.