La Selva Beach, CA
How exposed is La Selva Beach to wildfire?
USFS scores La Selva Beach at the 68th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (well above the national norm for wildfire risk), a figure built from 1,829 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks La Selva Beach at the 70th national percentile — 2 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
1,829 buildings are counted in La Selva Beach, and 55.7% of them are Indirect exposure — ember-driven risk rather than the 44% in Direct exposure or the 0.4% rated Minimal.
La Selva Beach against the rest of the country
La Selva Beach's 68th national percentile looks worse in isolation than its 25th ranking inside California does — this place is on the milder end for its own state, by 43 points. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, La Selva Beach ranks 10,072 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 7,984 by building count (1 is largest). Within California alone, it ranks 1,172 of 1,570 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for California on its state page.
La Selva Beach and the insurance market
La Selva Beach's 68th-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 55.7% of La Selva Beach's buildings sit in the Indirect zone, sealing the ember pathway (vents, roofing, gutters) is the intervention this page's data actually supports — see the home-hardening guide.
Where La Selva Beach's figures come from
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 1,829 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for La Selva Beach. The exposure-zones guide covers what La Selva Beach's dominant indirect exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.