Lake Forest, IL
How exposed is Lake Forest to wildfire?
Lake Forest's 7,852 buildings earn a 28th-percentile wildfire-risk score nationally under USFS's model — close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Lake Forest at the 30th percentile, close to its 28th-percentile risk score.
Where Lake Forest's buildings actually sit
USFS classifies 45.9% of Lake Forest's buildings as Minimal exposure, the largest of the three zones here by a wide margin over 44% Direct and 10.1% Indirect — a landscape-level risk rather than a building-by-building one. At 7,852 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Where Lake Forest ranks
Within Illinois, Lake Forest ranks higher (77th percentile) than it does nationally (28th) — one of the more fire-exposed places in a state that, overall, scores lower than that. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Lake Forest ranks 22,590 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 2,163 by building count (1 is largest). Within Illinois alone, it ranks 331 of 1,445 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Illinois on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Lake Forest
Lake Forest's moderate rating (28th 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
Lake Forest's 45.9% 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 Lake Forest's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Lake Forest's 22,590-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Lake Forest's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.