Covelo, CA
Covelo, CA's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
USFS scores Covelo at the 92nd national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally), a figure built from 1,096 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Covelo at the 92nd percentile, close to its 92nd-percentile risk score.
Covelo's building exposure, zone by zone
Of Covelo's 1,096 counted buildings, 87.2% carry Direct exposure and only 0% carry Minimal — a lopsided split that puts defensible-space clearing ahead of vents or roofing as the intervention worth doing first.
How Covelo compares
Covelo's 92nd national percentile looks worse in isolation than its 65th ranking inside California does — this place is on the milder end for its own state, by 26 points. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Covelo ranks 2,637 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 11,301 by building count (1 is largest). Within California alone, it ranks 543 of 1,570 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for California on its state page.
Covelo and the insurance market
Covelo 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 92nd-percentile score like Covelo's can end up mattering for. More on the disclosure law.
Hardening a home in Covelo
Covelo's 87.2% 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
Covelo's 92nd-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Covelo, see the exposure-zones guide.