Forest Lake, IL
Forest Lake, IL's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
Forest Lake sits at the 26th percentile nationally for wildfire risk to structures — close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range — per USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model, built from its 807 counted buildings, not vegetation cover alone. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Forest Lake at the 30th national percentile — 3 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
Forest Lake rates 94.7% Minimal exposure against just 5.3% Direct and 0% Indirect — of 807 buildings counted, few sit close enough to burnable vegetation for USFS to flag them individually.
Where Forest Lake ranks
Forest Lake's 74th-percentile standing inside Illinois outpaces its 26th 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, Forest Lake ranks 23,220 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 13,575 by building count (1 is largest). Within Illinois alone, it ranks 377 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
Forest Lake's moderate rating (26th 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 Forest Lake
Forest Lake's 94.7% 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 Forest Lake's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Forest Lake's 23,220-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Forest Lake's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.