Descanso, CA's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
Out of every US place USFS scores, Descanso lands at the 100th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — a figure built from its 1,219 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Descanso at the 100th national percentile — 0 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
1,219 buildings are counted in Descanso, and 97.4% of them sit in USFS's Direct exposure zone — flame contact, not just ember cast, is the live possibility for most of them, against 0% rated Minimal.
Where Descanso ranks
There's little gap between Descanso's 100th national percentile and its 100th percentile inside California, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Descanso ranks 3 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 10,538 by building count (1 is largest). Within California alone, it ranks 3 of 1,570 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for California on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Descanso
Descanso 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 100th-percentile score like Descanso's can end up mattering for. More on the disclosure law.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Descanso's 97.4% 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
Every one of the two percentiles behind Descanso's 3-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Descanso, see the exposure-zones guide.