Brawley, CA
Brawley wildfire risk explained
USFS scores Brawley at the 50th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (modestly above the national average for wildfire risk), a figure built from 7,774 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Brawley at the 52nd national percentile — 2 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 57.2% of Brawley's buildings as Minimal exposure, the largest of the three zones here by a wide margin over 3% Direct and 39.8% Indirect — a landscape-level risk rather than a building-by-building one. At 7,774 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Where Brawley ranks
Brawley'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, Brawley ranks 15,905 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 2,189 by building count (1 is largest). Within California alone, it ranks 1,410 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
Brawley'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.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Brawley's 57.2% Minimal-exposure share means structure-level hardening matters less here than it would elsewhere — still worth the low-cost basics, per the home-hardening guide.
Where Brawley's figures come from
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 7,774 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Brawley. The exposure-zones guide covers what Brawley's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.