Buffalo Grove, IL
Buffalo Grove wildfire risk explained
Buffalo Grove sits at the 25th 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 11,000 counted buildings, not vegetation cover alone. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Buffalo Grove at the 27th national percentile — 3 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Buffalo Grove's building exposure, zone by zone
USFS classifies 98.3% of Buffalo Grove's buildings as Minimal exposure, the largest of the three zones here by a wide margin over 1.7% Direct and 0% Indirect — a landscape-level risk rather than a building-by-building one. At 11,000 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Buffalo Grove against the rest of the country
Compare Buffalo Grove's two percentiles: 71st within Illinois, only 25th nationally — a gap of 46 points that marks it as unusually exposed for its own state. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Buffalo Grove ranks 23,754 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 1,443 by building count (1 is largest). Within Illinois alone, it ranks 424 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
Buffalo Grove's moderate wildfire rating (25th 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
With 98.3% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, Buffalo Grove gets less benefit from structure hardening than a Direct- or Indirect-dominant place would — the home-hardening guide explains why the zone matters.
More on how this number was built
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 11,000 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Buffalo Grove. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Buffalo Grove, see the exposure-zones guide.