Montgomery, IL
Montgomery wildfire risk explained
Out of every US place USFS scores, Montgomery lands at the 9th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally — a figure built from its 6,190 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Montgomery's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 10th percentile nationally.
Where Montgomery's buildings actually sit
Montgomery rates 94.4% Minimal exposure against just 5.6% Direct and 0% Indirect — of 6,190 buildings counted, few sit close enough to burnable vegetation for USFS to flag them individually. At 6,190 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Where Montgomery ranks
Within Illinois, Montgomery ranks higher (40th percentile) than it does nationally (9th) — one of the more fire-exposed places in a state that, overall, scores lower than that. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Montgomery ranks 28,735 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 2,802 by building count (1 is largest). Within Illinois alone, it ranks 866 of 1,445 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Illinois on its state page.
Montgomery and the insurance market
Montgomery's low wildfire rating (9th 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 94.4% of Montgomery 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
Montgomery's 9th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Montgomery, see the exposure-zones guide.