Calipatria, CA
How exposed is Calipatria to wildfire?
Calipatria sits at the 68th 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 1,287 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 Calipatria at the 70th percentile, close to its 68th-percentile risk score.
Where Calipatria's buildings actually sit
Most of Calipatria's buildings (87.9% of 1,287) fall outside USFS's Direct and Indirect zones entirely — that doesn't zero out the score above, it means the risk is regional, not structure-by-structure.
Where Calipatria ranks
Calipatria's 68th national percentile looks worse in isolation than its 25th ranking inside California does — this place is on the milder end for its own state, by 43 points. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Calipatria ranks 10,140 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 10,142 by building count (1 is largest). Within California alone, it ranks 1,178 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
Calipatria sits in California, one of two states that legally require a wildfire-risk disclosure at sale. California's FAIR Plan, the state's insurer of last resort, ended 2025 with 668,609 residential policies after adding 21,859 in Q4 alone — the kind of market shift a 68th-percentile score like Calipatria's can end up mattering for. More on the disclosure law.
What would actually reduce this score
Calipatria's 87.9% 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.
More on how this number was built
Calipatria's 68th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Calipatria, see the exposure-zones guide.