Glendale Heights, IL
Glendale Heights wildfire risk explained
Out of every US place USFS scores, Glendale Heights lands at the 21st percentile for wildfire risk to structures — close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range — a figure built from its 7,697 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Glendale Heights at the 21st percentile, close to its 21st-percentile risk score.
Where Glendale Heights's buildings actually sit
USFS classifies 99.3% of Glendale Heights's buildings as Minimal exposure, the largest of the three zones here by a wide margin over 0.7% Direct and 0% Indirect — a landscape-level risk rather than a building-by-building one. At 7,697 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
How Glendale Heights compares
Glendale Heights's 63rd-percentile standing inside Illinois outpaces its 21st 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, Glendale Heights ranks 24,983 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 2,215 by building count (1 is largest). Within Illinois alone, it ranks 533 of 1,445 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Illinois on its state page.
Glendale Heights and the insurance market
Glendale Heights's moderate rating (21st 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
Even with 99.3% of Glendale Heights 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.
Where Glendale Heights's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Glendale Heights's 24,983-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Glendale Heights's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.