Winthrop Harbor, IL
Winthrop Harbor, IL's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Winthrop Harbor at the 41st national percentile for risk to structures, modestly above the national average for wildfire risk — a score built from 3,510 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Winthrop Harbor at the 42nd percentile, close to its 41st-percentile risk score.
Where Winthrop Harbor's buildings actually sit
USFS classifies 69.9% of Winthrop Harbor's buildings as Minimal exposure, the largest of the three zones here by a wide margin over 30.1% Direct and 0% Indirect — a landscape-level risk rather than a building-by-building one.
How Winthrop Harbor compares
Within Illinois, Winthrop Harbor ranks higher (94th percentile) than it does nationally (41st) — one of the more fire-exposed places in a state that, overall, scores lower than that. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Winthrop Harbor ranks 18,521 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 4,759 by building count (1 is largest). Within Illinois alone, it ranks 95 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
Winthrop Harbor's elevated wildfire rating (41st 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 Winthrop Harbor
Winthrop Harbor's 69.9% 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
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 3,510 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Winthrop Harbor. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Winthrop Harbor, see the exposure-zones guide.