Gardena, CA
Gardena wildfire risk explained
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Gardena at the 44th national percentile for risk to structures, modestly above the national average for wildfire risk — a score built from 17,796 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Gardena at the 53rd national percentile — 9 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Gardena's building exposure, zone by zone
Most of Gardena's buildings (99.9% of 17,796) 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 17,796 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Where Gardena ranks
Gardena's 44th national percentile looks worse in isolation than its 7th ranking inside California does — this place is on the milder end for its own state, by 37 points. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Gardena ranks 17,511 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 804 by building count (1 is largest). Within California alone, it ranks 1,454 of 1,570 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for California on its state page.
Gardena and the insurance market
Gardena's 44th-percentile score lands in California, the only two states requiring a wildfire disclosure at sale. California's surplus-lines homeowners market passed 300,000 policies for the first time in 2025, driven by carriers pulling back from wildfire-exposed areas statewide. The disclosure-law guide covers what it requires.
What would actually reduce this score
Even with 99.9% of Gardena outside USFS's Direct and Indirect zones, basic hardening — gutter maintenance, ember-resistant vents — is inexpensive relative to the regional burn-probability risk noted above. Details in the home-hardening guide.
Where Gardena's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Gardena's 17,511-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Gardena's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.