Buffalo Prairie, IL
How exposed is Buffalo Prairie to wildfire?
Buffalo Prairie sits at the 27th 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 114 counted buildings, not vegetation cover alone. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Buffalo Prairie at the 27th percentile, close to its 27th-percentile risk score.
Where Buffalo Prairie's buildings actually sit
Buffalo Prairie rates 64.9% Minimal exposure against just 35.1% Direct and 0% Indirect — of 114 buildings counted, few sit close enough to burnable vegetation for USFS to flag them individually.
How Buffalo Prairie compares
Compare Buffalo Prairie's two percentiles: 74th within Illinois, only 27th nationally — a gap of 48 points that marks it as unusually exposed for its own state. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Buffalo Prairie ranks 23,156 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 28,444 by building count (1 is largest). Within Illinois alone, it ranks 369 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
At the 27th national percentile, Buffalo Prairie rates moderate for wildfire risk — well short of the threshold where insurers have been withdrawing coverage, though comparing a quote costs nothing either way.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Buffalo Prairie's 64.9% 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.
Where Buffalo Prairie's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Buffalo Prairie's 23,156-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Buffalo Prairie's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.