Bella Vista, CA
Bella Vista wildfire risk explained
USFS scores Bella Vista at the 96th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally), a figure built from 2,926 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 Bella Vista at the 97th percentile, close to its 96th-percentile risk score.
Where Bella Vista's buildings actually sit
Of Bella Vista's 2,926 counted buildings, 99.8% carry Direct exposure and only 0% carry Minimal — a lopsided split that puts defensible-space clearing ahead of vents or roofing as the intervention worth doing first.
Bella Vista against the rest of the country
Bella Vista's 96th national percentile looks worse in isolation than its 77th ranking inside California does — this place is on the milder end for its own state, by 19 points. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Bella Vista ranks 1,220 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 5,543 by building count (1 is largest). Within California alone, it ranks 362 of 1,570 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for California on its state page.
Bella Vista and the insurance market
Bella Vista's 96th-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
Bella Vista's 99.8% 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 Bella Vista's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Bella Vista's 1,220-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Bella Vista's dominant direct exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.