Encinitas, CA
Encinitas wildfire risk explained
Encinitas's 23,648 buildings earn a 78th-percentile wildfire-risk score nationally under USFS's model — well above the national norm for wildfire risk. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Encinitas's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 76th percentile nationally.
Encinitas's building exposure, zone by zone
Encinitas rates 91% Minimal exposure against just 4.8% Direct and 4.2% Indirect — of 23,648 buildings counted, few sit close enough to burnable vegetation for USFS to flag them individually. At 23,648 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Where Encinitas ranks
Inside California, Encinitas sits at just the 37th percentile even though it scores 78th nationally — the state's overall wildfire exposure is high enough to make this a relatively quiet corner of it. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Encinitas ranks 6,987 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 546 by building count (1 is largest). Within California alone, it ranks 987 of 1,570 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for California on its state page.
Encinitas and the insurance market
Encinitas 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 78th-percentile score like Encinitas's can end up mattering for. More on the disclosure law.
What would actually reduce this score
Encinitas's 91% Minimal-exposure share means structure-level hardening matters less here than it would elsewhere — still worth the low-cost basics, per the home-hardening guide.
Where Encinitas's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Encinitas's 6,987-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Encinitas's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.