Buffalo, IL
Buffalo, IL's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
Buffalo sits at the 1st percentile nationally for wildfire risk to structures — among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally — per USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model, built from its 301 counted buildings, not vegetation cover alone. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Buffalo's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 1st percentile nationally.
Where Buffalo's buildings actually sit
USFS classifies 93.7% of Buffalo's buildings as Minimal exposure, the largest of the three zones here by a wide margin over 6.3% Direct and 0% Indirect — a landscape-level risk rather than a building-by-building one.
How Buffalo compares
There's little gap between Buffalo's 1st national percentile and its 10th percentile inside Illinois, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Buffalo ranks 31,161 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 21,594 by building count (1 is largest). Within Illinois alone, it ranks 1,300 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's low rating (1st percentile nationally) sits outside the range where wildfire risk alone reshapes an insurance market — still, a homeowner here loses nothing by comparing rates.
Hardening a home in Buffalo
Buffalo's 93.7% 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
Every one of the two percentiles behind Buffalo's 31,161-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Buffalo, see the exposure-zones guide.