Ottawa, IL
Ottawa, IL's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
Out of every US place USFS scores, Ottawa lands at the 28th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range — a figure built from its 10,008 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Ottawa at the 28th national percentile — 1 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Ottawa's building exposure, zone by zone
Most of Ottawa's buildings (63.4% of 10,008) fall outside USFS's Direct and Indirect zones entirely — that doesn't zero out the score above, it means the risk is regional, not structure-by-structure. At 10,008 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
How Ottawa compares
Compare Ottawa's two percentiles: 76th within Illinois, only 28th nationally — a gap of 49 points that marks it as unusually exposed for its own state. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Ottawa ranks 22,844 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 1,608 by building count (1 is largest). Within Illinois alone, it ranks 346 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
Ottawa's moderate rating (28th 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
Ottawa's 63.4% 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
Ottawa's 28th-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 Ottawa, see the exposure-zones guide.