Auburn, CA
How exposed is Auburn to wildfire?
Auburn's 5,901 buildings earn a 94th-percentile wildfire-risk score nationally under USFS's model — in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Auburn's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 91st percentile nationally.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
70.6% of Auburn's 5,901 buildings fall in USFS's Indirect exposure zone — ember cast rather than direct flame — against 18.3% Direct and 11% Minimal. Vent screens and roofing material matter more here than lot clearing alone. At 5,901 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
How Auburn compares
Auburn's 94th national percentile looks worse in isolation than its 70th ranking inside California does — this place is on the milder end for its own state, by 24 points. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Auburn ranks 1,976 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 2,919 by building count (1 is largest). Within California alone, it ranks 465 of 1,570 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for California on its state page.
Auburn and the insurance market
Auburn's 94th-percentile score lands in California, the only two states requiring a wildfire disclosure at sale. California's surplus-lines homeowners market passed 300,000 policies for the first time in 2025, driven by carriers pulling back from wildfire-exposed areas statewide. The disclosure-law guide covers what it requires.
What would actually reduce this score
With ember exposure the dominant pattern in Auburn (70.6% Indirect), vent screens and roofing material tend to matter more than lot clearing alone. The home-hardening guide covers both.
Where Auburn's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Auburn's 1,976-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Auburn's dominant indirect exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.