Riverwoods, IL
Riverwoods, IL's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
USFS scores Riverwoods at the 25th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range), a figure built from 1,605 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Riverwoods at the 26th national percentile — 2 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Of Riverwoods's 1,605 counted buildings, 65% carry Direct exposure and only 35% carry Minimal — a lopsided split that puts defensible-space clearing ahead of vents or roofing as the intervention worth doing first.
How Riverwoods compares
Compare Riverwoods's two percentiles: 71st within Illinois, only 25th nationally — a gap of 46 points that marks it as unusually exposed for its own state. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Riverwoods ranks 23,755 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 8,750 by building count (1 is largest). Within Illinois alone, it ranks 425 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
Riverwoods's moderate wildfire rating (25th 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.
What would actually reduce this score
With 65% of Riverwoods in Direct exposure, defensible-space clearing and ember-resistant construction (vents, Class-A roofing) address the exposure this page's own numbers describe, not a generic checklist. See the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Riverwoods's 25th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Riverwoods, see the exposure-zones guide.