Waukegan, IL
Waukegan, IL's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
Waukegan sits at the 38th percentile nationally for wildfire risk to structures — close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range — per USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model, built from its 26,226 counted buildings, not vegetation cover alone. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Waukegan's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 38th percentile nationally.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
USFS classifies 80.3% of Waukegan's buildings as Minimal exposure, the largest of the three zones here by a wide margin over 5.9% Direct and 13.8% Indirect — a landscape-level risk rather than a building-by-building one. At 26,226 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Where Waukegan ranks
Waukegan's 90th-percentile standing inside Illinois outpaces its 38th national percentile — this is a hotter spot than most of its own state, even though the state as a whole runs cooler nationally. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Waukegan ranks 19,563 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 472 by building count (1 is largest). Within Illinois alone, it ranks 142 of 1,445 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Illinois on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Waukegan
Waukegan's moderate wildfire rating (38th 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 Waukegan
Waukegan's 80.3% 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.
More on how this number was built
Waukegan's 38th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Waukegan, see the exposure-zones guide.