Gilroy, CA
Gilroy wildfire risk explained
Gilroy's 16,558 buildings earn a 88th-percentile wildfire-risk score nationally under USFS's model — in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Gilroy at the 88th national percentile — 0 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Only 7.1% of Gilroy's 16,558 buildings carry Direct exposure and 44.4% carry Indirect; the remaining 48.4% are Minimal, which shifts the risk driving this page's score toward the surrounding landscape rather than any one structure. At 16,558 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Where Gilroy ranks
Inside California, Gilroy sits at just the 56th percentile even though it scores 88th 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, Gilroy ranks 3,868 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 874 by building count (1 is largest). Within California alone, it ranks 688 of 1,570 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for California on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Gilroy
Gilroy 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 Gilroy's can end up mattering for. More on the disclosure law.
What would actually reduce this score
With 48.4% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, Gilroy gets less benefit from structure hardening than a Direct- or Indirect-dominant place would — the home-hardening guide explains why the zone matters.
More on how this number was built
Gilroy's 88th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Gilroy, see the exposure-zones guide.