Chesterfield, IL
How exposed is Chesterfield to wildfire?
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Chesterfield at the 16th national percentile for risk to structures, among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally — a score built from 187 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 Chesterfield at the 17th percentile, close to its 16th-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Most of Chesterfield's buildings (78.6%) sit in the Indirect zone, where wind-blown embers rather than flame front are the mechanism USFS is scoring — ember-resistant vents and non-combustible roofing are the interventions this pattern favors, more than defensible space alone.
How Chesterfield compares
Compare Chesterfield's two percentiles: 55th within Illinois, only 16th nationally — a gap of 39 points that marks it as unusually exposed for its own state. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Chesterfield ranks 26,400 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 25,345 by building count (1 is largest). Within Illinois alone, it ranks 651 of 1,445 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Illinois on its state page.
Chesterfield and the insurance market
At the 16th national percentile, Chesterfield rates low 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
With ember exposure the dominant pattern in Chesterfield (78.6% Indirect), vent screens and roofing material tend to matter more than lot clearing alone. The home-hardening guide covers both.
More on how this number was built
Chesterfield's 16th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Chesterfield, see the exposure-zones guide.