St. Jacob, IL
How exposed is St. Jacob to wildfire?
St. Jacob sits at the 6th percentile nationally for wildfire risk to structures — among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally — per USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model, built from its 677 counted buildings, not vegetation cover alone. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, St. Jacob's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 7th percentile nationally.
Where St. Jacob's buildings actually sit
St. Jacob rates 90.8% Minimal exposure against just 9.2% Direct and 0% Indirect — of 677 buildings counted, few sit close enough to burnable vegetation for USFS to flag them individually.
Where St. Jacob ranks
Compare St. Jacob's two percentiles: 33rd within Illinois, only 6th nationally — a gap of 27 points that marks it as unusually exposed for its own state. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, St. Jacob ranks 29,492 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 14,899 by building count (1 is largest). Within Illinois alone, it ranks 968 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
St. Jacob's low rating (6th percentile nationally) sits outside the range where wildfire risk alone reshapes an insurance market — still, a homeowner here loses nothing by comparing rates.
What would actually reduce this score
St. Jacob's 90.8% Minimal-exposure share means structure-level hardening matters less here than it would elsewhere — still worth the low-cost basics, per the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
St. Jacob's 6th-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. Jacob, see the exposure-zones guide.