Niles, IL
Niles wildfire risk explained
Niles sits at the 24th percentile nationally for wildfire risk to structures — close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range — per USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model, built from its 11,474 counted buildings, not vegetation cover alone. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Niles at the 27th national percentile — 3 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Only 0.2% of Niles's 11,474 buildings carry Direct exposure and 0% carry Indirect; the remaining 99.8% are Minimal, which shifts the risk driving this page's score toward the surrounding landscape rather than any one structure. At 11,474 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Niles against the rest of the country
Niles's 70th-percentile standing inside Illinois outpaces its 24th 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, Niles ranks 23,880 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 1,373 by building count (1 is largest). Within Illinois alone, it ranks 441 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
Niles's moderate wildfire rating (24th 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.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
With 99.8% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, Niles 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 Niles's 23,880-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Niles, see the exposure-zones guide.