Burlingame, CA
Burlingame, CA's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
Burlingame sits at the 60th percentile nationally for wildfire risk to structures — well above the national norm for wildfire risk — per USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model, built from its 9,562 counted buildings, not vegetation cover alone. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Burlingame at the 61st percentile, close to its 60th-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Only 2.1% of Burlingame's 9,562 buildings carry Direct exposure and 10.7% carry Indirect; the remaining 87.3% are Minimal, which shifts the risk driving this page's score toward the surrounding landscape rather than any one structure. At 9,562 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Where Burlingame ranks
Burlingame's 60th national percentile looks worse in isolation than its 19th ranking inside California does — this place is on the milder end for its own state, by 42 points. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Burlingame ranks 12,471 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 1,703 by building count (1 is largest). Within California alone, it ranks 1,280 of 1,570 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for California on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Burlingame
Burlingame's 60th-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
Even with 87.3% of Burlingame 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 Burlingame's figures come from
Burlingame's 60th-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 Burlingame's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.