Granite City, IL
Granite City wildfire risk explained
Out of every US place USFS scores, Granite City lands at the 13th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally — a figure built from its 15,705 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Granite City's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 14th percentile nationally.
Where Granite City's buildings actually sit
USFS classifies 90% of Granite City's buildings as Minimal exposure, the largest of the three zones here by a wide margin over 2.6% Direct and 7.4% Indirect — a landscape-level risk rather than a building-by-building one. At 15,705 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Granite City against the rest of the country
Within Illinois, Granite City ranks higher (50th 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, Granite City ranks 27,285 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 935 by building count (1 is largest). Within Illinois alone, it ranks 725 of 1,445 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Illinois on its state page.
Granite City and the insurance market
Granite City's low wildfire rating (13th 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.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
With 90% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, Granite City gets less benefit from structure hardening than a Direct- or Indirect-dominant place would — the home-hardening guide explains why the zone matters.
More on how this number was built
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 15,705 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Granite City. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Granite City, see the exposure-zones guide.