Calwa, CA
How exposed is Calwa to wildfire?
USFS scores Calwa at the 55th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (modestly above the national average for wildfire risk), a figure built from 761 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Calwa at the 60th percentile, close to its 55th-percentile risk score.
Where Calwa's buildings actually sit
Most of Calwa's buildings (98.7% of 761) 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.
Calwa against the rest of the country
Calwa's 55th national percentile looks worse in isolation than its 14th ranking inside California does — this place is on the milder end for its own state, by 41 points. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Calwa ranks 14,296 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 14,002 by building count (1 is largest). Within California alone, it ranks 1,352 of 1,570 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for California on its state page.
Calwa and the insurance market
Because Calwa 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.
What would actually reduce this score
Calwa's 98.7% 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
Every one of the two percentiles behind Calwa's 14,296-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Calwa, see the exposure-zones guide.