Sherrard, IL
How exposed is Sherrard to wildfire?
Out of every US place USFS scores, Sherrard lands at the 39th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range — a figure built from its 495 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Sherrard's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 41st percentile nationally.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Most of Sherrard's buildings (88.7%) sit in the Indirect zone, where wind-blown embers rather than flame front are the mechanism USFS is scoring — ember-resistant vents and non-combustible roofing are the interventions this pattern favors, more than defensible space alone.
Sherrard against the rest of the country
Compare Sherrard's two percentiles: 92nd within Illinois, only 39th nationally — a gap of 53 points that marks it as unusually exposed for its own state. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Sherrard ranks 19,154 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 17,440 by building count (1 is largest). Within Illinois alone, it ranks 120 of 1,445 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Illinois on its state page.
Sherrard and the insurance market
Sherrard's moderate wildfire rating (39th 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.
Hardening a home in Sherrard
Sherrard's 88.7% Indirect-exposure share points at embers, not flame contact, as the main pathway — ember-resistant vents and non-combustible roofing rank ahead of defensible space here. Detail in the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Sherrard's 19,154-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Sherrard, see the exposure-zones guide.