Evanston, IL
Evanston, IL's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
USFS scores Evanston at the 13th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally), a figure built from 18,629 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Evanston at the 19th national percentile — 6 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
USFS classifies 98.8% of Evanston's buildings as Minimal exposure, the largest of the three zones here by a wide margin over 1.2% Direct and 0% Indirect — a landscape-level risk rather than a building-by-building one. At 18,629 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Where Evanston ranks
Within Illinois, Evanston ranks higher (48th percentile) than it does nationally (13th) — one of the more fire-exposed places in a state that, overall, scores lower than that. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Evanston ranks 27,442 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 763 by building count (1 is largest). Within Illinois alone, it ranks 743 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
Evanston's low rating (13th percentile nationally) sits outside the range where wildfire risk alone reshapes an insurance market — still, a homeowner here loses nothing by comparing rates.
What would actually reduce this score
Evanston'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.
Where Evanston's figures come from
Evanston's 13th-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 Evanston's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.