Park Forest, IL
How exposed is Park Forest to wildfire?
USFS scores Park Forest at the 47th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (modestly above the national average for wildfire risk), a figure built from 7,816 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Park Forest's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 49th percentile nationally.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Most of Park Forest's buildings (98% of 7,816) 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 7,816 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Where Park Forest ranks
Compare Park Forest's two percentiles: 97th within Illinois, only 47th nationally — a gap of 50 points that marks it as unusually exposed for its own state. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Park Forest ranks 16,694 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 2,174 by building count (1 is largest). Within Illinois alone, it ranks 38 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
At the 47th national percentile, Park Forest rates elevated for wildfire risk — well short of the threshold where insurers have been withdrawing coverage, though comparing a quote costs nothing either way.
What would actually reduce this score
With 98% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, Park Forest 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 Park Forest's 16,694-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Park Forest, see the exposure-zones guide.