Colfax, CA
How exposed is Colfax to wildfire?
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Colfax at the 99th national percentile for risk to structures, in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — a score built from 857 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Colfax at the 98th national percentile — 1 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Where Colfax's buildings actually sit
71.1% of Colfax's 857 buildings fall in USFS's Indirect exposure zone — ember cast rather than direct flame — against 28.9% Direct and 0% Minimal. Vent screens and roofing material matter more here than lot clearing alone.
How Colfax compares
There's little gap between Colfax's 99th national percentile and its 90th percentile inside California, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Colfax ranks 338 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 13,110 by building count (1 is largest). Within California alone, it ranks 167 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 Colfax 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
Colfax's 71.1% Indirect-exposure share points at embers, not flame contact, as the main pathway — ember-resistant vents and non-combustible roofing rank ahead of defensible space here. Detail in the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Colfax's 338-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Colfax, see the exposure-zones guide.