St. Joseph, IL
St. Joseph wildfire risk explained
Out of every US place USFS scores, St. Joseph lands at the 2nd percentile for wildfire risk to structures — among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally — a figure built from its 1,814 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. Joseph at the 2nd percentile, close to its 2nd-percentile risk score.
Where St. Joseph's buildings actually sit
Only 3.5% of St. Joseph's 1,814 buildings carry Direct exposure and 0% carry Indirect; the remaining 96.5% are Minimal, which shifts the risk driving this page's score toward the surrounding landscape rather than any one structure.
St. Joseph against the rest of the country
St. Joseph scores 2nd nationally and 13th within Illinois — close enough that its state context doesn't change the picture the national number already gives. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, St. Joseph ranks 31,011 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 8,017 by building count (1 is largest). Within Illinois alone, it ranks 1,264 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. Joseph's low wildfire rating (2nd 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
St. Joseph's 96.5% 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. Joseph's 2nd-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. Joseph, see the exposure-zones guide.