Vernon Hills, IL
Vernon Hills wildfire risk explained
USFS scores Vernon Hills at the 30th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range), a figure built from 6,272 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Vernon Hills at the 32nd percentile, close to its 30th-percentile risk score.
Where Vernon Hills's buildings actually sit
Only 3.1% of Vernon Hills's 6,272 buildings carry Direct exposure and 0% carry Indirect; the remaining 96.9% are Minimal, which shifts the risk driving this page's score toward the surrounding landscape rather than any one structure. At 6,272 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
How Vernon Hills compares
Within Illinois, Vernon Hills ranks higher (79th percentile) than it does nationally (30th) — one of the more fire-exposed places in a state that, overall, scores lower than that. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Vernon Hills ranks 22,181 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 2,763 by building count (1 is largest). Within Illinois alone, it ranks 304 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
Vernon Hills's moderate wildfire rating (30th 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 96.9% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, Vernon Hills gets less benefit from structure hardening than a Direct- or Indirect-dominant place would — the home-hardening guide explains why the zone matters.
Where Vernon Hills's figures come from
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 6,272 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Vernon Hills. The exposure-zones guide covers what Vernon Hills's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.