Columbus, IL
How exposed is Columbus to wildfire?
USFS scores Columbus at the 8th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally), a figure built from 95 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Columbus at the 8th percentile, close to its 8th-percentile risk score.
Where Columbus's buildings actually sit
Most of Columbus's buildings (84.2% of 95) fall outside USFS's Direct and Indirect zones entirely — that doesn't zero out the score above, it means the risk is regional, not structure-by-structure.
Columbus against the rest of the country
Within Illinois, Columbus ranks higher (39th percentile) than it does nationally (8th) — one of the more fire-exposed places in a state that, overall, scores lower than that. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Columbus ranks 28,861 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 29,255 by building count (1 is largest). Within Illinois alone, it ranks 883 of 1,445 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Illinois on its state page.
Columbus and the insurance market
Columbus's low wildfire rating (8th 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.
Hardening a home in Columbus
Even with 84.2% of Columbus outside USFS's Direct and Indirect zones, basic hardening — gutter maintenance, ember-resistant vents — is inexpensive relative to the regional burn-probability risk noted above. Details in the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Columbus's 28,861-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Columbus, see the exposure-zones guide.