Big Creek, CA
Big Creek wildfire risk explained
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Big Creek at the 76th national percentile for risk to structures, well above the national norm for wildfire risk — a score built from 157 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Big Creek at the 77th national percentile — 1 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Where Big Creek's buildings actually sit
157 buildings are counted in Big Creek, and 66.9% 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.
Big Creek against the rest of the country
Inside California, Big Creek sits at just the 35th percentile even though it scores 76th 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, Big Creek ranks 7,522 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 26,553 by building count (1 is largest). Within California alone, it ranks 1,021 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
Big 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 76th-percentile score like Big Creek's can end up mattering for. More on the disclosure law.
What would actually reduce this score
Because Direct exposure dominates in Big Creek (66.9%), the highest-leverage fix is defensible space, not roofing or vents alone — covered in the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Big Creek's 7,522-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Big Creek, see the exposure-zones guide.