Elmwood Park, IL
How exposed is Elmwood Park to wildfire?
USFS scores Elmwood Park at the 37th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range), a figure built from 10,388 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Elmwood Park's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 41st percentile nationally.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Most of Elmwood Park's buildings (100% of 10,388) 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 10,388 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
How Elmwood Park compares
Elmwood Park's 90th-percentile standing inside Illinois outpaces its 37th 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, Elmwood Park ranks 19,723 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 1,533 by building count (1 is largest). Within Illinois alone, it ranks 150 of 1,445 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Illinois on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Elmwood Park
Elmwood Park's moderate wildfire rating (37th 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.
What would actually reduce this score
Even with 100% of Elmwood Park 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
Elmwood Park's 37th-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 Elmwood Park, see the exposure-zones guide.