La Mesa, CA
La Mesa, CA's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
USFS scores La Mesa at the 74th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (well above the national norm for wildfire risk), a figure built from 16,848 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, La Mesa's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 72nd percentile nationally.
Where La Mesa's buildings actually sit
Most of La Mesa's buildings (97.4% of 16,848) 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 16,848 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Where La Mesa ranks
La Mesa's 74th national percentile looks worse in isolation than its 31st ranking inside California does — this place is on the milder end for its own state, by 42 points. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, La Mesa ranks 8,343 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 859 by building count (1 is largest). Within California alone, it ranks 1,081 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
La Mesa 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 74th-percentile score like La Mesa's can end up mattering for. More on the disclosure law.
What would actually reduce this score
La Mesa's 97.4% 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.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind La Mesa's 8,343-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond La Mesa, see the exposure-zones guide.