Northlake, IL
Northlake, IL's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
Northlake sits at the 6th percentile nationally for wildfire risk to structures — among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally — per USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model, built from its 5,395 counted buildings, not vegetation cover alone. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Northlake's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 9th percentile nationally.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Only 0.1% of Northlake's 5,395 buildings carry Direct exposure and 0% carry Indirect; the remaining 99.9% are Minimal, which shifts the risk driving this page's score toward the surrounding landscape rather than any one structure. At 5,395 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
How Northlake compares
Compare Northlake's two percentiles: 32nd within Illinois, only 6th nationally — a gap of 26 points that marks it as unusually exposed for its own state. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Northlake ranks 29,586 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 3,200 by building count (1 is largest). Within Illinois alone, it ranks 981 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
Northlake's low wildfire rating (6th 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
Even with 99.9% of Northlake 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
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 5,395 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Northlake. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Northlake, see the exposure-zones guide.