Bay View Gardens, IL
Bay View Gardens, IL's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Bay View Gardens at the 17th national percentile for risk to structures, among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally — a score built from 252 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Bay View Gardens's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 18th percentile nationally.
Bay View Gardens's building exposure, zone by zone
86.1% of Bay View Gardens's 252 buildings fall in USFS's Indirect exposure zone — ember cast rather than direct flame — against 13.9% Direct and 0% Minimal. Vent screens and roofing material matter more here than lot clearing alone.
How Bay View Gardens compares
Compare Bay View Gardens's two percentiles: 57th within Illinois, only 17th nationally — a gap of 40 points that marks it as unusually exposed for its own state. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Bay View Gardens ranks 26,055 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 23,069 by building count (1 is largest). Within Illinois alone, it ranks 623 of 1,445 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Illinois on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Bay View Gardens's low wildfire rating (17th 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
Bay View Gardens's 86.1% Indirect-exposure share points at embers, not flame contact, as the main pathway — ember-resistant vents and non-combustible roofing rank ahead of defensible space here. Detail in the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Bay View Gardens's 17th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Bay View Gardens, see the exposure-zones guide.