Oswego, IL
Oswego wildfire risk explained
Oswego sits at the 18th 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 10,079 counted buildings, not vegetation cover alone. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Oswego's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 19th percentile nationally.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
USFS classifies 93.3% of Oswego's buildings as Minimal exposure, the largest of the three zones here by a wide margin over 6.7% Direct and 0% Indirect — a landscape-level risk rather than a building-by-building one. At 10,079 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Where Oswego ranks
Within Illinois, Oswego ranks higher (59th percentile) than it does nationally (18th) — one of the more fire-exposed places in a state that, overall, scores lower than that. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Oswego ranks 25,769 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 1,591 by building count (1 is largest). Within Illinois alone, it ranks 598 of 1,445 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Illinois on its state page.
Oswego and the insurance market
Oswego's low rating (18th percentile nationally) sits outside the range where wildfire risk alone reshapes an insurance market — still, a homeowner here loses nothing by comparing rates.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Oswego's 93.3% Minimal-exposure share means structure-level hardening matters less here than it would elsewhere — still worth the low-cost basics, per the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Oswego's 18th-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 Oswego, see the exposure-zones guide.