Thornton, IL
Thornton, IL's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
USFS scores Thornton at the 51st national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (modestly above the national average for wildfire risk), a figure built from 1,535 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Thornton's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 54th percentile nationally.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
USFS classifies 98.8% of Thornton's buildings as Minimal exposure, the largest of the three zones here by a wide margin over 1.2% Direct and 0% Indirect — a landscape-level risk rather than a building-by-building one.
Where Thornton ranks
Compare Thornton's two percentiles: 99th within Illinois, only 51st nationally — a gap of 48 points that marks it as unusually exposed for its own state. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Thornton ranks 15,405 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 9,009 by building count (1 is largest). Within Illinois alone, it ranks 19 of 1,445 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Illinois on its state page.
Thornton and the insurance market
Thornton's elevated wildfire rating (51st 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 Thornton
With 98.8% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, Thornton 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 Thornton's 15,405-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Thornton, see the exposure-zones guide.