Wheeling, IL
How exposed is Wheeling to wildfire?
USFS scores Wheeling at the 23rd national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range), a figure built from 8,001 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Wheeling's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 25th percentile nationally.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Most of Wheeling's buildings (98.9% of 8,001) fall outside USFS's Direct and Indirect zones entirely — that doesn't zero out the score above, it means the risk is regional, not structure-by-structure. At 8,001 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Wheeling against the rest of the country
Within Illinois, Wheeling ranks higher (67th percentile) than it does nationally (23rd) — one of the more fire-exposed places in a state that, overall, scores lower than that. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Wheeling ranks 24,386 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 2,114 by building count (1 is largest). Within Illinois alone, it ranks 485 of 1,445 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Illinois on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Wheeling
Wheeling's moderate wildfire rating (23rd 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 Wheeling
Even with 98.9% of Wheeling 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 Wheeling's 24,386-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Wheeling, see the exposure-zones guide.