St. Charles, IL
St. Charles, IL's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
Out of every US place USFS scores, St. Charles lands at the 26th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range — a figure built from its 11,054 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts St. Charles at the 26th percentile, close to its 26th-percentile risk score.
Where St. Charles's buildings actually sit
USFS classifies 93.6% of St. Charles's buildings as Minimal exposure, the largest of the three zones here by a wide margin over 6.4% Direct and 0% Indirect — a landscape-level risk rather than a building-by-building one. At 11,054 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Where St. Charles ranks
Within Illinois, St. Charles ranks higher (74th percentile) than it does nationally (26th) — one of the more fire-exposed places in a state that, overall, scores lower than that. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, St. Charles ranks 23,283 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 1,437 by building count (1 is largest). Within Illinois alone, it ranks 386 of 1,445 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Illinois on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in St. Charles
At the 26th national percentile, St. Charles rates moderate 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
Even with 93.6% of St. Charles outside USFS's Direct and Indirect zones, basic hardening — gutter maintenance, ember-resistant vents — is inexpensive relative to the regional burn-probability risk noted above. Details in the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
St. Charles's 26th-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 St. Charles, see the exposure-zones guide.