East Chicago, IN
East Chicago wildfire risk explained
USFS scores East Chicago at the 56th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (modestly above the national average for wildfire risk), a figure built from 13,307 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks East Chicago at the 53rd national percentile — 2 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
East Chicago rates 99.9% Minimal exposure against just 0.1% Direct and 0% Indirect — of 13,307 buildings counted, few sit close enough to burnable vegetation for USFS to flag them individually. At 13,307 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
How East Chicago compares
Compare East Chicago's two percentiles: 100th within Indiana, only 56th nationally — a gap of 44 points that marks it as unusually exposed for its own state. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, East Chicago ranks 13,922 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 1,142 by building count (1 is largest). Within Indiana alone, it ranks 5 of 967 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Indiana on its state page.
East Chicago and the insurance market
At the 56th national percentile, East Chicago rates elevated for wildfire risk — well short of the threshold where insurers have been withdrawing coverage, though comparing a quote costs nothing either way.
Hardening a home in East Chicago
East Chicago's 99.9% 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 East Chicago's figures come from
East Chicago's 56th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what East Chicago's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.