Effingham, IL
How exposed is Effingham to wildfire?
Effingham's 6,315 buildings earn a 12th-percentile wildfire-risk score nationally under USFS's model — among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Effingham at the 13th national percentile — 0 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Where Effingham's buildings actually sit
USFS classifies 53.5% of Effingham's buildings as Minimal exposure, the largest of the three zones here by a wide margin over 9.4% Direct and 37.1% Indirect — a landscape-level risk rather than a building-by-building one. At 6,315 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
How Effingham compares
Within Illinois, Effingham ranks higher (47th percentile) than it does nationally (12th) — one of the more fire-exposed places in a state that, overall, scores lower than that. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Effingham ranks 27,663 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 2,744 by building count (1 is largest). Within Illinois alone, it ranks 764 of 1,445 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Illinois on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Effingham
Effingham'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.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
With 53.5% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, Effingham gets less benefit from structure hardening than a Direct- or Indirect-dominant place would — the home-hardening guide explains why the zone matters.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Effingham's 27,663-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Effingham, see the exposure-zones guide.