Pearl City, IL
Pearl City wildfire risk explained
USFS scores Pearl City at the 3rd national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally), a figure built from 512 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Pearl City at the 3rd percentile, close to its 3rd-percentile risk score.
Where Pearl City's buildings actually sit
USFS classifies 93.8% of Pearl City's buildings as Minimal exposure, the largest of the three zones here by a wide margin over 6.3% Direct and 0% Indirect — a landscape-level risk rather than a building-by-building one.
How Pearl City compares
Pearl City's 18th-percentile standing inside Illinois outpaces its 3rd 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, Pearl City ranks 30,658 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 17,148 by building count (1 is largest). Within Illinois alone, it ranks 1,185 of 1,445 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Illinois on its state page.
Pearl City and the insurance market
Pearl City's low wildfire rating (3rd 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 93.8% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, Pearl City gets less benefit from structure hardening than a Direct- or Indirect-dominant place would — the home-hardening guide explains why the zone matters.
Where Pearl City's figures come from
Pearl City's 3rd-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Pearl City's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.