Aliso Viejo, CA
Aliso Viejo, CA's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
Out of every US place USFS scores, Aliso Viejo lands at the 88th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — a figure built from its 9,721 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Aliso Viejo's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 88th percentile nationally.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
USFS puts 67.3% of Aliso Viejo's 9,721 buildings in the Indirect exposure zone, versus 2.2% Direct and 30.4% Minimal — a place where the fire doesn't need to reach the structure directly for embers to. At 9,721 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
How Aliso Viejo compares
Aliso Viejo's 88th national percentile looks worse in isolation than its 56th ranking inside California does — this place is on the milder end for its own state, by 31 points. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Aliso Viejo ranks 3,835 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 1,683 by building count (1 is largest). Within California alone, it ranks 683 of 1,570 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for California on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Aliso Viejo
Because Aliso Viejo is in California, a wildfire-hazard disclosure is legally required before a sale closes here — unusual nationally, since only these two states mandate it. The state's FAIR Plan alone carried 668,609 policies by the end of 2025. Full detail in the disclosure-law guide.
Hardening a home in Aliso Viejo
Because 67.3% of Aliso Viejo's buildings sit in the Indirect zone, sealing the ember pathway (vents, roofing, gutters) is the intervention this page's data actually supports — see the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Aliso Viejo's 3,835-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Aliso Viejo, see the exposure-zones guide.