Blue Lake, CA
How exposed is Blue Lake to wildfire?
Out of every US place USFS scores, Blue Lake lands at the 50th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — modestly above the national average for wildfire risk — a figure built from its 700 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Blue Lake at the 53rd national percentile — 3 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Blue Lake's building exposure, zone by zone
USFS puts 88.1% of Blue Lake's 700 buildings in the Indirect exposure zone, versus 11.9% Direct and 0% Minimal — a place where the fire doesn't need to reach the structure directly for embers to.
How Blue Lake compares
Blue Lake's 50th national percentile looks worse in isolation than its 10th ranking inside California does — this place is on the milder end for its own state, by 39 points. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Blue Lake ranks 15,810 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 14,653 by building count (1 is largest). Within California alone, it ranks 1,407 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
Blue Lake's 50th-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.
What would actually reduce this score
Blue Lake's 88.1% Indirect-exposure share points at embers, not flame contact, as the main pathway — ember-resistant vents and non-combustible roofing rank ahead of defensible space here. Detail in the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 700 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Blue Lake. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Blue Lake, see the exposure-zones guide.