Durham, CA
How exposed is Durham to wildfire?
USFS scores Durham at the 87th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally), a figure built from 4,361 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Durham at the 88th national percentile — 2 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Durham's building exposure, zone by zone
Direct exposure dominates in Durham: 67.1% of its 4,361 buildings, versus 32.2% Indirect and 0.8% Minimal. Clearing space around a structure changes the outcome here more than any single building-material swap.
How Durham compares
Durham's 87th national percentile looks worse in isolation than its 54th ranking inside California does — this place is on the milder end for its own state, by 33 points. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Durham ranks 4,213 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 3,922 by building count (1 is largest). Within California alone, it ranks 725 of 1,570 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for California on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Durham
Durham 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 87th-percentile score like Durham's can end up mattering for. More on the disclosure law.
Hardening a home in Durham
Durham's 67.1% 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.
Where Durham's figures come from
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 4,361 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Durham. The exposure-zones guide covers what Durham's dominant direct exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.