Downey, CA
Downey, CA's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
Downey sits at the 37th percentile nationally for wildfire risk to structures — close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range — per USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model, built from its 33,509 counted buildings, not vegetation cover alone. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Downey at the 43rd percentile, close to its 37th-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Most of Downey's buildings (99.7% of 33,509) fall outside USFS's Direct and Indirect zones entirely — that doesn't zero out the score above, it means the risk is regional, not structure-by-structure. At 33,509 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
How Downey compares
Downey's 37th national percentile looks worse in isolation than its 5th ranking inside California does — this place is on the milder end for its own state, by 32 points. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Downey ranks 19,875 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 326 by building count (1 is largest). Within California alone, it ranks 1,496 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
Downey 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 37th-percentile score like Downey's can end up mattering for. More on the disclosure law.
Hardening a home in Downey
With 99.7% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, Downey gets less benefit from structure hardening than a Direct- or Indirect-dominant place would — the home-hardening guide explains why the zone matters.
Where Downey's figures come from
Downey's 37th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Downey's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.