Huntington Beach, CA
Huntington Beach, CA's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
USFS scores Huntington Beach at the 70th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (well above the national norm for wildfire risk), a figure built from 56,983 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Huntington Beach at the 74th national percentile — 4 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
87.7% of Huntington Beach's 56,983 buildings sit in USFS's Minimal exposure zone, with only 0.5% rated Direct — risk here comes from regional burn probability more than proximity to burnable vegetation at the structure itself. At 56,983 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
How Huntington Beach compares
Huntington Beach's 70th national percentile looks worse in isolation than its 27th ranking inside California does — this place is on the milder end for its own state, by 43 points. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Huntington Beach ranks 9,510 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 143 by building count (1 is largest). Within California alone, it ranks 1,146 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
Huntington Beach 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 70th-percentile score like Huntington Beach's can end up mattering for. More on the disclosure law.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
With 87.7% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, Huntington Beach gets less benefit from structure hardening than a Direct- or Indirect-dominant place would — the home-hardening guide explains why the zone matters.
Where Huntington Beach's figures come from
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 56,983 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Huntington Beach. The exposure-zones guide covers what Huntington Beach's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.