Cherry Valley, CA
Cherry Valley wildfire risk explained
USFS scores Cherry Valley at the 99th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally), a figure built from 4,146 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Cherry Valley's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 98th percentile nationally.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Direct exposure dominates in Cherry Valley: 72.5% of its 4,146 buildings, versus 26.9% Indirect and 0.6% Minimal. Clearing space around a structure changes the outcome here more than any single building-material swap.
Cherry Valley against the rest of the country
There's little gap between Cherry Valley's 99th national percentile and its 87th percentile inside California, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Cherry Valley ranks 433 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 4,105 by building count (1 is largest). Within California alone, it ranks 203 of 1,570 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for California on its state page.
Cherry Valley and the insurance market
Cherry Valley's 99th-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
Cherry Valley's 72.5% 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.
Where Cherry Valley's figures come from
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 4,146 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Cherry Valley. The exposure-zones guide covers what Cherry Valley's dominant direct exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.