Wheaton, IL
How exposed is Wheaton to wildfire?
USFS scores Wheaton at the 28th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range), a figure built from 16,041 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 Wheaton at the 29th percentile, close to its 28th-percentile risk score.
Wheaton's building exposure, zone by zone
Wheaton rates 86.4% Minimal exposure against just 3.2% Direct and 10.3% Indirect — of 16,041 buildings counted, few sit close enough to burnable vegetation for USFS to flag them individually. At 16,041 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
How Wheaton compares
Within Illinois, Wheaton ranks higher (77th percentile) than it does nationally (28th) — one of the more fire-exposed places in a state that, overall, scores lower than that. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Wheaton ranks 22,591 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 912 by building count (1 is largest). Within Illinois alone, it ranks 332 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
At the 28th national percentile, Wheaton rates moderate for wildfire risk — well short of the threshold where insurers have been withdrawing coverage, though comparing a quote costs nothing either way.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Wheaton's 86.4% 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 Wheaton's figures come from
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 16,041 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Wheaton. The exposure-zones guide covers what Wheaton's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.