Kep'el, CA
Kep'el, CA's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
Out of every US place USFS scores, Kep'el lands at the 77th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — well above the national norm for wildfire risk — a figure built from its 41 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Kep'el at the 75th national percentile — 1 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
41 buildings are counted in Kep'el, and 100% 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% rated Minimal.
How Kep'el compares
Inside California, Kep'el sits at just the 35th percentile even though it scores 77th 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, Kep'el ranks 7,398 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 31,133 by building count (1 is largest). Within California alone, it ranks 1,016 of 1,570 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for California on its state page.
Kep'el and the insurance market
Kep'el's 77th-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
Because Direct exposure dominates in Kep'el (100%), the highest-leverage fix is defensible space, not roofing or vents alone — covered in the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Kep'el's 7,398-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Kep'el, see the exposure-zones guide.