Mount Zion, IL
How exposed is Mount Zion to wildfire?
USFS scores Mount Zion at the 17th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally), a figure built from 2,614 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Mount Zion's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 18th percentile nationally.
Mount Zion's building exposure, zone by zone
82.4% of Mount Zion's 2,614 buildings sit in USFS's Minimal exposure zone, with only 17.6% rated Direct — risk here comes from regional burn probability more than proximity to burnable vegetation at the structure itself.
Mount Zion against the rest of the country
Mount Zion's 56th-percentile standing inside Illinois outpaces its 17th national percentile — this is a hotter spot than most of its own state, even though the state as a whole runs cooler nationally. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Mount Zion ranks 26,148 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 6,076 by building count (1 is largest). Within Illinois alone, it ranks 632 of 1,445 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Illinois on its state page.
Mount Zion and the insurance market
Mount Zion's low wildfire rating (17th 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
With 82.4% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, Mount Zion gets less benefit from structure hardening than a Direct- or Indirect-dominant place would — the home-hardening guide explains why the zone matters.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Mount Zion's 26,148-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Mount Zion, see the exposure-zones guide.