Bluffs, IL
Bluffs wildfire risk explained
USFS scores Bluffs at the 15th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally), a figure built from 495 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Bluffs at the 15th percentile, close to its 15th-percentile risk score.
Bluffs's building exposure, zone by zone
Bluffs rates 50.9% Minimal exposure against just 6.9% Direct and 42.2% Indirect — of 495 buildings counted, few sit close enough to burnable vegetation for USFS to flag them individually.
Bluffs against the rest of the country
Bluffs's 53rd-percentile standing inside Illinois outpaces its 15th national percentile — this is a hotter spot than most of its own state, even though the state as a whole runs cooler nationally. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Bluffs ranks 26,780 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 17,439 by building count (1 is largest). Within Illinois alone, it ranks 674 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
Bluffs's low wildfire rating (15th 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
Bluffs's 50.9% 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.
More on how this number was built
Bluffs's 15th-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 Bluffs, see the exposure-zones guide.