Itasca, IL
How exposed is Itasca to wildfire?
USFS scores Itasca at the 20th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally), a figure built from 3,247 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Itasca at the 23rd percentile, close to its 20th-percentile risk score.
Itasca's building exposure, zone by zone
Most of Itasca's buildings (95.9% of 3,247) fall outside USFS's Direct and Indirect zones entirely — that doesn't zero out the score above, it means the risk is regional, not structure-by-structure.
Itasca against the rest of the country
Compare Itasca's two percentiles: 62nd within Illinois, only 20th nationally — a gap of 42 points that marks it as unusually exposed for its own state. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Itasca ranks 25,206 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 5,106 by building count (1 is largest). Within Illinois alone, it ranks 556 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
At the 20th national percentile, Itasca 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 95.9% of Itasca 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 Itasca's 25,206-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Itasca, see the exposure-zones guide.