La Palma, CA
La Palma wildfire risk explained
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts La Palma at the 36th national percentile for risk to structures, close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range — a score built from 4,253 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, La Palma's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 44th percentile nationally.
La Palma's building exposure, zone by zone
La Palma rates 99.4% Minimal exposure against just 0.6% Direct and 0% Indirect — of 4,253 buildings counted, few sit close enough to burnable vegetation for USFS to flag them individually.
La Palma against the rest of the country
La Palma's 36th national percentile looks worse in isolation than its 4th ranking inside California does — this place is on the milder end for its own state, by 32 points. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, La Palma ranks 20,128 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 4,014 by building count (1 is largest). Within California alone, it ranks 1,502 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
Because La Palma is in California, a wildfire-hazard disclosure is legally required before a sale closes here — unusual nationally, since only these two states mandate it. The state's FAIR Plan alone carried 668,609 policies by the end of 2025. Full detail in the disclosure-law guide.
What would actually reduce this score
Even with 99.4% of La Palma 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.
Where La Palma's figures come from
La Palma's 36th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what La Palma's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.