Cotati, CA
Cotati wildfire risk explained
Cotati sits at the 84th percentile nationally for wildfire risk to structures — in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — per USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model, built from its 3,013 counted buildings, not vegetation cover alone. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Cotati's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 88th percentile nationally.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Cotati rates 89% Minimal exposure against just 10.3% Direct and 0.7% Indirect — of 3,013 buildings counted, few sit close enough to burnable vegetation for USFS to flag them individually.
How Cotati compares
Inside California, Cotati sits at just the 48th percentile even though it scores 84th nationally — the state's overall wildfire exposure is high enough to make this a relatively quiet corner of it. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Cotati ranks 5,003 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 5,416 by building count (1 is largest). Within California alone, it ranks 819 of 1,570 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for California on its state page.
Cotati and the insurance market
Cotati 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 84th-percentile score like Cotati's can end up mattering for. More on the disclosure law.
Hardening a home in Cotati
With 89% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, Cotati gets less benefit from structure hardening than a Direct- or Indirect-dominant place would — the home-hardening guide explains why the zone matters.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Cotati's 5,003-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Cotati, see the exposure-zones guide.