Benicia, CA
Benicia, CA's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Benicia at the 88th national percentile for risk to structures, in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — a score built from 10,673 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Benicia at the 89th national percentile — 1 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
USFS classifies 56.8% of Benicia's buildings as Minimal exposure, the largest of the three zones here by a wide margin over 7.9% Direct and 35.3% Indirect — a landscape-level risk rather than a building-by-building one. At 10,673 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Benicia against the rest of the country
Benicia's 88th national percentile looks worse in isolation than its 58th ranking inside California does — this place is on the milder end for its own state, by 31 points. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Benicia ranks 3,644 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 1,489 by building count (1 is largest). Within California alone, it ranks 663 of 1,570 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for California on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Benicia
Because Benicia 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.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Even with 56.8% of Benicia 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
Benicia's 88th-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 Benicia, see the exposure-zones guide.