Zion, IL
Zion, IL's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
Zion's 9,295 buildings earn a 42nd-percentile wildfire-risk score nationally under USFS's model — modestly above the national average for wildfire risk. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Zion at the 43rd national percentile — 1 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
USFS classifies 80.9% of Zion's buildings as Minimal exposure, the largest of the three zones here by a wide margin over 7.7% Direct and 11.5% Indirect — a landscape-level risk rather than a building-by-building one. At 9,295 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
How Zion compares
Within Illinois, Zion ranks higher (94th percentile) than it does nationally (42nd) — one of the more fire-exposed places in a state that, overall, scores lower than that. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Zion ranks 18,208 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 1,771 by building count (1 is largest). Within Illinois alone, it ranks 85 of 1,445 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Illinois on its state page.
Zion and the insurance market
Zion's elevated wildfire rating (42nd 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.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Even with 80.9% of Zion 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
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 9,295 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Zion. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Zion, see the exposure-zones guide.