Bakersfield, CA
How exposed is Bakersfield to wildfire?
Bakersfield sits at the 84th percentile nationally for wildfire risk to structures — in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — per USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model, built from its 130,764 counted buildings, not vegetation cover alone. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Bakersfield's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 85th percentile nationally.
Where Bakersfield's buildings actually sit
Bakersfield rates 77.7% Minimal exposure against just 5.1% Direct and 17.2% Indirect — of 130,764 buildings counted, few sit close enough to burnable vegetation for USFS to flag them individually. At 130,764 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
How Bakersfield compares
Inside California, Bakersfield sits at just the 47th percentile even though it scores 84th nationally — the state's overall wildfire exposure is high enough to make this a relatively quiet corner of it. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Bakersfield ranks 5,064 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 45 by building count (1 is largest). Within California alone, it ranks 828 of 1,570 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for California on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Bakersfield's 84th-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.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Even with 77.7% of Bakersfield 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
Bakersfield's 84th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Bakersfield, see the exposure-zones guide.