Gold River, CA
How exposed is Gold River to wildfire?
Out of every US place USFS scores, Gold River lands at the 74th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — well above the national norm for wildfire risk — a figure built from its 3,427 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Gold River's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 74th percentile nationally.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Gold River rates 48.4% Minimal exposure against just 7.6% Direct and 44.1% Indirect — of 3,427 buildings counted, few sit close enough to burnable vegetation for USFS to flag them individually.
How Gold River compares
Inside California, Gold River sits at just the 32nd percentile even though it scores 74th 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, Gold River ranks 8,247 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 4,875 by building count (1 is largest). Within California alone, it ranks 1,076 of 1,570 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for California on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Gold River's 74th-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.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Gold River's 48.4% 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 Gold River's figures come from
Gold River's 74th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Gold River's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.