Cottonwood (Kern), CA
Cottonwood (Kern), CA's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
Cottonwood (Kern)'s 677 buildings earn a 77th-percentile wildfire-risk score nationally under USFS's model — well above the national norm for wildfire risk. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Cottonwood (Kern) at the 79th percentile, close to its 77th-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
83.3% of Cottonwood (Kern)'s 677 buildings sit in USFS's Minimal exposure zone, with only 12.3% rated Direct — risk here comes from regional burn probability more than proximity to burnable vegetation at the structure itself.
Cottonwood (Kern) against the rest of the country
Inside California, Cottonwood (Kern) sits at just the 36th percentile even though it scores 77th 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, Cottonwood (Kern) ranks 7,337 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 14,895 by building count (1 is largest). Within California alone, it ranks 1,011 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
Cottonwood (Kern)'s 77th-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.
Hardening a home in Cottonwood (Kern)
With 83.3% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, Cottonwood (Kern) 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 Cottonwood (Kern)'s 7,337-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Cottonwood (Kern), see the exposure-zones guide.