Avenal, CA
How exposed is Avenal to wildfire?
USFS scores Avenal at the 82nd national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally), a figure built from 2,853 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Avenal at the 84th percentile, close to its 82nd-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
USFS puts 94.8% of Avenal's 2,853 buildings in the Indirect exposure zone, versus 5.2% Direct and 0% Minimal — a place where the fire doesn't need to reach the structure directly for embers to.
How Avenal compares
Avenal's 82nd national percentile looks worse in isolation than its 44th ranking inside California does — this place is on the milder end for its own state, by 38 points. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Avenal ranks 5,600 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 5,655 by building count (1 is largest). Within California alone, it ranks 884 of 1,570 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for California on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Avenal
Because Avenal 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.
What would actually reduce this score
Avenal's 94.8% Indirect-exposure share points at embers, not flame contact, as the main pathway — ember-resistant vents and non-combustible roofing rank ahead of defensible space here. Detail in the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Avenal's 82nd-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Avenal, see the exposure-zones guide.