Castaic, CA
How exposed is Castaic to wildfire?
USFS scores Castaic at the 98th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally), a figure built from 5,837 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Castaic's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 97th percentile nationally.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Most of Castaic's buildings (80.8%) sit in the Indirect zone, where wind-blown embers rather than flame front are the mechanism USFS is scoring — ember-resistant vents and non-combustible roofing are the interventions this pattern favors, more than defensible space alone. At 5,837 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
How Castaic compares
There's little gap between Castaic's 98th national percentile and its 83rd percentile inside California, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Castaic ranks 623 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 2,953 by building count (1 is largest). Within California alone, it ranks 259 of 1,570 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for California on its state page.
Castaic and the insurance market
Castaic 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 98th-percentile score like Castaic's can end up mattering for. More on the disclosure law.
Hardening a home in Castaic
With ember exposure the dominant pattern in Castaic (80.8% Indirect), vent screens and roofing material tend to matter more than lot clearing alone. The home-hardening guide covers both.
More on how this number was built
Castaic's 98th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Castaic, see the exposure-zones guide.