Gazelle, CA
Gazelle, CA's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
Gazelle sits at the 88th percentile nationally for wildfire risk to structures — in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — per USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model, built from its 125 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 Gazelle at the 91st percentile, close to its 88th-percentile risk score.
Gazelle's building exposure, zone by zone
USFS puts 57.6% of Gazelle's 125 buildings in the Indirect exposure zone, versus 42.4% Direct and 0% Minimal — a place where the fire doesn't need to reach the structure directly for embers to.
Gazelle against the rest of the country
Gazelle's 88th national percentile looks worse in isolation than its 58th ranking inside California does — this place is on the milder end for its own state, by 31 points. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Gazelle ranks 3,646 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 27,928 by building count (1 is largest). Within California alone, it ranks 665 of 1,570 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for California on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Gazelle
Gazelle 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 88th-percentile score like Gazelle's can end up mattering for. More on the disclosure law.
What would actually reduce this score
Because 57.6% of Gazelle'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
Every one of the two percentiles behind Gazelle's 3,646-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Gazelle, see the exposure-zones guide.