Bellwood, IL
Bellwood wildfire risk explained
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Bellwood at the 20th national percentile for risk to structures, among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally — a score built from 9,311 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Bellwood at the 21st percentile, close to its 20th-percentile risk score.
Bellwood's building exposure, zone by zone
Most of Bellwood's buildings (100% of 9,311) 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 9,311 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Bellwood against the rest of the country
Within Illinois, Bellwood ranks higher (61st percentile) than it does nationally (20th) — one of the more fire-exposed places in a state that, overall, scores lower than that. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Bellwood ranks 25,234 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 1,766 by building count (1 is largest). Within Illinois alone, it ranks 560 of 1,445 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Illinois on its state page.
Bellwood and the insurance market
Bellwood's low rating (20th percentile nationally) sits outside the range where wildfire risk alone reshapes an insurance market — still, a homeowner here loses nothing by comparing rates.
What would actually reduce this score
Bellwood's 100% Minimal-exposure share means structure-level hardening matters less here than it would elsewhere — still worth the low-cost basics, per the home-hardening guide.
Where Bellwood's figures come from
Bellwood's 20th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Bellwood's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.