Lake in the Hills, IL
Lake in the Hills wildfire risk explained
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Lake in the Hills at the 21st national percentile for risk to structures, close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range — a score built from 9,022 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Lake in the Hills at the 22nd national percentile — 1 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Where Lake in the Hills's buildings actually sit
Most of Lake in the Hills's buildings (96.7% of 9,022) 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. At 9,022 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
How Lake in the Hills compares
Compare Lake in the Hills's two percentiles: 63rd within Illinois, only 21st nationally — a gap of 43 points that marks it as unusually exposed for its own state. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Lake in the Hills ranks 24,956 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 1,837 by building count (1 is largest). Within Illinois alone, it ranks 531 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
Lake in the Hills's moderate wildfire rating (21st 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.
What would actually reduce this score
Even with 96.7% of Lake in the Hills 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 Lake in the Hills's figures come from
Lake in the Hills's 21st-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Lake in the Hills's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.