Challenge-Brownsville, CA
Challenge-Brownsville wildfire risk explained
Challenge-Brownsville's 727 buildings earn a 100th-percentile wildfire-risk score nationally under USFS's model — in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Challenge-Brownsville at the 100th percentile, close to its 100th-percentile risk score.
Where Challenge-Brownsville's buildings actually sit
Direct exposure dominates in Challenge-Brownsville: 98.2% of its 727 buildings, versus 1.8% Indirect and 0% Minimal. Clearing space around a structure changes the outcome here more than any single building-material swap.
How Challenge-Brownsville compares
There's little gap between Challenge-Brownsville's 100th national percentile and its 99th percentile inside California, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Challenge-Brownsville ranks 24 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 14,370 by building count (1 is largest). Within California alone, it ranks 13 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
Because Challenge-Brownsville 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
Challenge-Brownsville's 98.2% Direct-exposure share means lot clearing around the structure typically outweighs any single material upgrade here. The home-hardening guide ranks the options for a place shaped like this.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Challenge-Brownsville's 24-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Challenge-Brownsville, see the exposure-zones guide.