Bear Creek, CA
Bear Creek, CA's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
Bear Creek sits at the 86th 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 101 counted buildings, not vegetation cover alone. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Bear Creek at the 87th national percentile — 1 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Where Bear Creek's buildings actually sit
66.3% of Bear Creek's 101 buildings sit in USFS's Direct exposure zone, roughly 67 structures close enough to burnable vegetation for flame contact, not just embers — 0% fall in the Indirect, ember-only zone and 33.7% are Minimal.
How Bear Creek compares
Inside California, Bear Creek sits at just the 53rd percentile even though it scores 86th 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, Bear Creek ranks 4,370 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 28,981 by building count (1 is largest). Within California alone, it ranks 745 of 1,570 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for California on its state page.
Bear Creek and the insurance market
Bear Creek sits in California, one of two states that legally require a wildfire-risk disclosure at sale. California's FAIR Plan, the state's insurer of last resort, ended 2025 with 668,609 residential policies after adding 21,859 in Q4 alone — the kind of market shift a 86th-percentile score like Bear Creek's can end up mattering for. More on the disclosure law.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Bear Creek's 66.3% Direct-exposure share means lot clearing around the structure typically outweighs any single material upgrade here. The home-hardening guide ranks the options for a place shaped like this.
Where Bear Creek's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Bear Creek's 4,370-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Bear Creek's dominant direct exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.