Galesburg, IL
Galesburg wildfire risk explained
Galesburg sits at the 4th percentile nationally for wildfire risk to structures — among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally — per USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model, built from its 15,906 counted buildings, not vegetation cover alone. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Galesburg at the 4th percentile, close to its 4th-percentile risk score.
Galesburg's building exposure, zone by zone
Galesburg rates 98.4% Minimal exposure against just 1.6% Direct and 0% Indirect — of 15,906 buildings counted, few sit close enough to burnable vegetation for USFS to flag them individually. At 15,906 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Galesburg against the rest of the country
Compare Galesburg's two percentiles: 25th within Illinois, only 4th nationally — a gap of 21 points that marks it as unusually exposed for its own state. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Galesburg ranks 30,121 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 924 by building count (1 is largest). Within Illinois alone, it ranks 1,076 of 1,445 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Illinois on its state page.
Galesburg and the insurance market
At the 4th national percentile, Galesburg rates low for wildfire risk — well short of the threshold where insurers have been withdrawing coverage, though comparing a quote costs nothing either way.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Galesburg's 98.4% 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 Galesburg's figures come from
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 15,906 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Galesburg. The exposure-zones guide covers what Galesburg's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.