Harding, IL
Harding wildfire risk explained
Harding 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 102 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 Harding at the 4th percentile, close to its 4th-percentile risk score.
Where Harding's buildings actually sit
USFS classifies 81.4% of Harding's buildings as Minimal exposure, the largest of the three zones here by a wide margin over 18.6% Direct and 0% Indirect — a landscape-level risk rather than a building-by-building one.
How Harding compares
Compare Harding's two percentiles: 25th within Illinois, only 4th nationally — a gap of 20 points that marks it as unusually exposed for its own state. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Harding ranks 30,182 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 28,941 by building count (1 is largest). Within Illinois alone, it ranks 1,088 of 1,445 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Illinois on its state page.
Harding and the insurance market
At the 4th national percentile, Harding rates low for wildfire risk — well short of the threshold where insurers have been withdrawing coverage, though comparing a quote costs nothing either way.
What would actually reduce this score
Even with 81.4% of Harding 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.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Harding's 30,182-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Harding, see the exposure-zones guide.