Des Plaines, IL
How exposed is Des Plaines to wildfire?
USFS scores Des Plaines at the 19th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally), a figure built from 22,482 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 Des Plaines at the 20th percentile, close to its 19th-percentile risk score.
Where Des Plaines's buildings actually sit
Most of Des Plaines's buildings (98.8% of 22,482) 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. At 22,482 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Des Plaines against the rest of the country
Des Plaines's 60th-percentile standing inside Illinois outpaces its 19th national percentile — this is a hotter spot than most of its own state, even though the state as a whole runs cooler nationally. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Des Plaines ranks 25,455 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 595 by building count (1 is largest). Within Illinois alone, it ranks 574 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
Des Plaines's low rating (19th 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 Des Plaines
Des Plaines's 98.8% 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
Des Plaines's 19th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Des Plaines, see the exposure-zones guide.