La Quinta, CA
La Quinta, CA's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts La Quinta at the 62nd national percentile for risk to structures, well above the national norm for wildfire risk — a score built from 21,553 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts La Quinta at the 66th percentile, close to its 62nd-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Most of La Quinta's buildings (71.9%) sit in the Indirect zone, where wind-blown embers rather than flame front are the mechanism USFS is scoring — ember-resistant vents and non-combustible roofing are the interventions this pattern favors, more than defensible space alone. At 21,553 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
La Quinta against the rest of the country
La Quinta ranks lower within California (20th percentile statewide) than its 62nd national percentile suggests alone — a calmer spot in a state where wildfire risk generally runs high. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, La Quinta ranks 11,902 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 642 by building count (1 is largest). Within California alone, it ranks 1,254 of 1,570 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for California on its state page.
La Quinta and the insurance market
La Quinta 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 62nd-percentile score like La Quinta's can end up mattering for. More on the disclosure law.
Hardening a home in La Quinta
La Quinta's 71.9% Indirect-exposure share points at embers, not flame contact, as the main pathway — ember-resistant vents and non-combustible roofing rank ahead of defensible space here. Detail in the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 21,553 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for La Quinta. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond La Quinta, see the exposure-zones guide.