Berry Creek, CA
How exposed is Berry Creek to wildfire?
USFS scores Berry Creek at the 85th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally), a figure built from 1,285 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Berry Creek's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 83rd percentile nationally.
Where Berry Creek's buildings actually sit
1,285 buildings are counted in Berry Creek, and 99.8% of them sit in USFS's Direct exposure zone — flame contact, not just ember cast, is the live possibility for most of them, against 0% rated Minimal.
How Berry Creek compares
Berry Creek's 85th national percentile looks worse in isolation than its 49th ranking inside California does — this place is on the milder end for its own state, by 36 points. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Berry Creek ranks 4,810 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 10,161 by building count (1 is largest). Within California alone, it ranks 795 of 1,570 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for California on its state page.
Berry Creek and the insurance market
Berry 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 85th-percentile score like Berry Creek's can end up mattering for. More on the disclosure law.
What would actually reduce this score
Berry Creek'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 Berry Creek's figures come from
Berry Creek's 85th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Berry Creek's dominant direct exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.