Sterling, IL
Sterling wildfire risk explained
Sterling's 7,396 buildings earn a 6th-percentile wildfire-risk score nationally under USFS's model — among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Sterling at the 6th percentile, close to its 6th-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
97.6% of Sterling's 7,396 buildings sit in USFS's Minimal exposure zone, with only 2.4% rated Direct — risk here comes from regional burn probability more than proximity to burnable vegetation at the structure itself. At 7,396 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
How Sterling compares
Compare Sterling's two percentiles: 31st within Illinois, only 6th nationally — a gap of 25 points that marks it as unusually exposed for its own state. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Sterling ranks 29,683 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 2,306 by building count (1 is largest). Within Illinois alone, it ranks 998 of 1,445 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Illinois on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Sterling
Sterling's low wildfire rating (6th 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.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
With 97.6% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, Sterling gets less benefit from structure hardening than a Direct- or Indirect-dominant place would — the home-hardening guide explains why the zone matters.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Sterling's 29,683-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Sterling, see the exposure-zones guide.