Vermilion, IL
Vermilion wildfire risk explained
USFS scores Vermilion at the 6th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally), a figure built from 198 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Vermilion at the 6th national percentile — 0 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Vermilion's building exposure, zone by zone
Only 21.2% of Vermilion's 198 buildings carry Direct exposure and 0% carry Indirect; the remaining 78.8% are Minimal, which shifts the risk driving this page's score toward the surrounding landscape rather than any one structure.
How Vermilion compares
Compare Vermilion'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, Vermilion ranks 29,495 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 24,919 by building count (1 is largest). Within Illinois alone, it ranks 971 of 1,445 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Illinois on its state page.
Vermilion and the insurance market
At the 6th national percentile, Vermilion rates low 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
Vermilion's 78.8% 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.
Where Vermilion's figures come from
Vermilion's 6th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Vermilion's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.