East Sonora, CA
East Sonora wildfire risk explained
Out of every US place USFS scores, East Sonora lands at the 97th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — a figure built from its 1,286 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts East Sonora at the 96th percentile, close to its 97th-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
USFS puts 60.8% of East Sonora's 1,286 buildings in the Indirect exposure zone, versus 39.2% Direct and 0% Minimal — a place where the fire doesn't need to reach the structure directly for embers to.
Where East Sonora ranks
East Sonora's 97th national percentile looks worse in isolation than its 78th ranking inside California does — this place is on the milder end for its own state, by 18 points. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, East Sonora ranks 1,095 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 10,154 by building count (1 is largest). Within California alone, it ranks 345 of 1,570 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for California on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in East Sonora
East Sonora 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 97th-percentile score like East Sonora's can end up mattering for. More on the disclosure law.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Because 60.8% of East Sonora's buildings sit in the Indirect zone, sealing the ember pathway (vents, roofing, gutters) is the intervention this page's data actually supports — see the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 1,286 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for East Sonora. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond East Sonora, see the exposure-zones guide.