Woodward, IA
How exposed is Woodward to wildfire?
Woodward sits at the 22nd percentile nationally for wildfire risk to structures — close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range — per USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model, built from its 798 counted buildings, not vegetation cover alone. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Woodward at the 22nd national percentile — 0 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
USFS classifies 88.7% of Woodward's buildings as Minimal exposure, the largest of the three zones here by a wide margin over 11.3% Direct and 0% Indirect — a landscape-level risk rather than a building-by-building one.
How Woodward compares
There's little gap between Woodward's 22nd national percentile and its 35th percentile inside Iowa, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Woodward ranks 24,611 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 13,649 by building count (1 is largest). Within Iowa alone, it ranks 659 of 1,017 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Iowa on its state page.
Woodward and the insurance market
Woodward's moderate wildfire rating (22nd 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
Even with 88.7% of Woodward 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
Woodward's 22nd-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 Woodward, see the exposure-zones guide.