Bombay Beach, CA
How exposed is Bombay Beach to wildfire?
Bombay Beach's 437 buildings earn a 15th-percentile wildfire-risk score nationally under USFS's model — among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Bombay Beach at the 11th percentile, close to its 15th-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Bombay Beach rates 98.6% Minimal exposure against just 1.4% Direct and 0% Indirect — of 437 buildings counted, few sit close enough to burnable vegetation for USFS to flag them individually.
Where Bombay Beach ranks
There's little gap between Bombay Beach's 15th national percentile and its 1st percentile inside California, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Bombay Beach ranks 26,746 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 18,513 by building count (1 is largest). Within California alone, it ranks 1,552 of 1,570 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for California on its state page.
Bombay Beach and the insurance market
Bombay Beach's 15th-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
Even with 98.6% of Bombay Beach 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.
Where Bombay Beach's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Bombay Beach's 26,746-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Bombay Beach's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.