Imperial Beach, CA
Imperial Beach wildfire risk explained
Imperial Beach's 6,379 buildings earn a 79th-percentile wildfire-risk score nationally under USFS's model — well above the national norm for wildfire risk. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Imperial Beach at the 80th 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
Most of Imperial Beach's buildings (99.8% of 6,379) fall outside USFS's Direct and Indirect zones entirely — that doesn't zero out the score above, it means the risk is regional, not structure-by-structure. At 6,379 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Where Imperial Beach ranks
Imperial Beach's 79th national percentile looks worse in isolation than its 39th ranking inside California does — this place is on the milder end for its own state, by 40 points. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Imperial Beach ranks 6,517 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 2,714 by building count (1 is largest). Within California alone, it ranks 951 of 1,570 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for California on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Imperial Beach
Imperial Beach's 79th-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.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Even with 99.8% of Imperial Beach outside USFS's Direct and Indirect zones, basic hardening — gutter maintenance, ember-resistant vents — is inexpensive relative to the regional burn-probability risk noted above. Details in the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 6,379 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Imperial Beach. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Imperial Beach, see the exposure-zones guide.