Bucks Lake, CA
How exposed is Bucks Lake to wildfire?
USFS scores Bucks Lake at the 99th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally), a figure built from 73 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Bucks Lake at the 98th national percentile — 1 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Of Bucks Lake's 73 counted buildings, 95.9% carry Direct exposure and only 4.1% carry Minimal — a lopsided split that puts defensible-space clearing ahead of vents or roofing as the intervention worth doing first.
Bucks Lake against the rest of the country
Bucks Lake's risk sits at a similar level relative to California (89th percentile statewide) as it does nationally (99th) — this place isn't unusual for its own state either way. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Bucks Lake ranks 337 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 30,158 by building count (1 is largest). Within California alone, it ranks 166 of 1,570 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for California on its state page.
Bucks Lake and the insurance market
Because Bucks Lake is in California, a wildfire-hazard disclosure is legally required before a sale closes here — unusual nationally, since only these two states mandate it. The state's FAIR Plan alone carried 668,609 policies by the end of 2025. Full detail in the disclosure-law guide.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Because Direct exposure dominates in Bucks Lake (95.9%), the highest-leverage fix is defensible space, not roofing or vents alone — covered in the home-hardening guide.
Where Bucks Lake's figures come from
Bucks Lake's 99th-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 Bucks Lake's dominant direct exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.