Hillcrest, CA
Hillcrest, CA's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Hillcrest at the 56th national percentile for risk to structures, modestly above the national average for wildfire risk — a score built from 3,873 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Hillcrest at the 57th national percentile — 1 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
USFS classifies 98.2% of Hillcrest's buildings as Minimal exposure, the largest of the three zones here by a wide margin over 1.8% Direct and 0% Indirect — a landscape-level risk rather than a building-by-building one.
Where Hillcrest ranks
Inside California, Hillcrest sits at just the 15th percentile even though it scores 56th 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, Hillcrest ranks 13,858 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 4,364 by building count (1 is largest). Within California alone, it ranks 1,341 of 1,570 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for California on its state page.
Hillcrest and the insurance market
Hillcrest 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 56th-percentile score like Hillcrest's can end up mattering for. More on the disclosure law.
Hardening a home in Hillcrest
Hillcrest's 98.2% 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 Hillcrest's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Hillcrest's 13,858-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Hillcrest's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.