Hidden Valley Lake, CA
Hidden Valley Lake, CA's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
USFS scores Hidden Valley Lake at the 99th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally), a figure built from 3,191 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 Hidden Valley Lake at the 100th percentile, close to its 99th-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
3,191 buildings are counted in Hidden Valley Lake, and 70.8% of them sit in USFS's Direct exposure zone — flame contact, not just ember cast, is the live possibility for most of them, against 0.1% rated Minimal.
How Hidden Valley Lake compares
Hidden Valley Lake's risk sits at a similar level relative to California (93rd 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, Hidden Valley Lake ranks 187 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 5,176 by building count (1 is largest). Within California alone, it ranks 108 of 1,570 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for California on its state page.
Hidden Valley Lake and the insurance market
Hidden Valley Lake'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
Hidden Valley Lake's 70.8% 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.
More on how this number was built
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 3,191 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Hidden Valley Lake. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Hidden Valley Lake, see the exposure-zones guide.