Colchester, IL
Colchester wildfire risk explained
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Colchester at the 12th national percentile for risk to structures, among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally — a score built from 921 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 Colchester at the 12th percentile, close to its 12th-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
USFS puts 55.7% of Colchester's 921 buildings in the Indirect exposure zone, versus 8.6% Direct and 35.7% Minimal — a place where the fire doesn't need to reach the structure directly for embers to.
How Colchester compares
Compare Colchester's two percentiles: 48th within Illinois, only 12th nationally — a gap of 35 points that marks it as unusually exposed for its own state. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Colchester ranks 27,599 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 12,545 by building count (1 is largest). Within Illinois alone, it ranks 759 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
Colchester's low rating (12th percentile nationally) sits outside the range where wildfire risk alone reshapes an insurance market — still, a homeowner here loses nothing by comparing rates.
What would actually reduce this score
Colchester's 55.7% Indirect-exposure share points at embers, not flame contact, as the main pathway — ember-resistant vents and non-combustible roofing rank ahead of defensible space here. Detail in the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Colchester's 12th-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 Colchester, see the exposure-zones guide.