Gonzales, CA
Gonzales wildfire risk explained
USFS scores Gonzales at the 59th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (modestly above the national average for wildfire risk), a figure built from 2,121 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Gonzales at the 56th percentile, close to its 59th-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Only 3.1% of Gonzales's 2,121 buildings carry Direct exposure and 0.1% carry Indirect; the remaining 96.9% are Minimal, which shifts the risk driving this page's score toward the surrounding landscape rather than any one structure.
Where Gonzales ranks
Inside California, Gonzales sits at just the 17th percentile even though it scores 59th 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, Gonzales ranks 13,039 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 7,141 by building count (1 is largest). Within California alone, it ranks 1,309 of 1,570 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for California on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Gonzales
Because Gonzales is in California, a wildfire-hazard disclosure is legally required before a sale closes here — unusual nationally, since only these two states mandate it. The state's FAIR Plan alone carried 668,609 policies by the end of 2025. Full detail in the disclosure-law guide.
What would actually reduce this score
With 96.9% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, Gonzales gets less benefit from structure hardening than a Direct- or Indirect-dominant place would — the home-hardening guide explains why the zone matters.
Where Gonzales's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Gonzales's 13,039-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Gonzales's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.