Golden Hills, CA
Golden Hills, CA's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
Out of every US place USFS scores, Golden Hills lands at the 99th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — a figure built from its 4,174 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Golden Hills at the 99th national percentile — 0 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Golden Hills's building exposure, zone by zone
Direct exposure dominates in Golden Hills: 66.3% of its 4,174 buildings, versus 33.7% Indirect and 0.1% Minimal. Clearing space around a structure changes the outcome here more than any single building-material swap.
How Golden Hills compares
Golden Hills's risk sits at a similar level relative to California (94th percentile statewide) as it does nationally (99th) — this place isn't unusual for its own state either way. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Golden Hills ranks 185 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 4,075 by building count (1 is largest). Within California alone, it ranks 106 of 1,570 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for California on its state page.
Golden Hills and the insurance market
Golden Hills's 99th-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
Golden Hills's 66.3% Direct-exposure share means lot clearing around the structure typically outweighs any single material upgrade here. The home-hardening guide ranks the options for a place shaped like this.
Where Golden Hills's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Golden Hills's 185-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Golden Hills's dominant direct exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.