Walnut, IL
Walnut, IL's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
USFS scores Walnut at the 2nd national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally), a figure built from 765 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Walnut at the 2nd national percentile — 0 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Where Walnut's buildings actually sit
USFS classifies 93.6% of Walnut's buildings as Minimal exposure, the largest of the three zones here by a wide margin over 6.4% Direct and 0% Indirect — a landscape-level risk rather than a building-by-building one.
Walnut against the rest of the country
Walnut's risk sits at a similar level relative to Illinois (15th percentile statewide) as it does nationally (2nd) — this place isn't unusual for its own state either way. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Walnut ranks 30,884 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 13,960 by building count (1 is largest). Within Illinois alone, it ranks 1,234 of 1,445 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Illinois on its state page.
Walnut and the insurance market
Walnut's low rating (2nd percentile nationally) sits outside the range where wildfire risk alone reshapes an insurance market — still, a homeowner here loses nothing by comparing rates.
Hardening a home in Walnut
Even with 93.6% of Walnut outside USFS's Direct and Indirect zones, basic hardening — gutter maintenance, ember-resistant vents — is inexpensive relative to the regional burn-probability risk noted above. Details in the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Walnut's 30,884-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Walnut, see the exposure-zones guide.