Lake Arrowhead, CA
Lake Arrowhead, CA's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
Out of every US place USFS scores, Lake Arrowhead lands at the 100th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — a figure built from its 9,349 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Lake Arrowhead at the 100th national percentile — 0 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Where Lake Arrowhead's buildings actually sit
Direct exposure dominates in Lake Arrowhead: 70.8% of its 9,349 buildings, versus 18.1% Indirect and 11.2% Minimal. Clearing space around a structure changes the outcome here more than any single building-material swap. At 9,349 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Where Lake Arrowhead ranks
There's little gap between Lake Arrowhead's 100th national percentile and its 96th percentile inside California, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Lake Arrowhead ranks 94 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 1,754 by building count (1 is largest). Within California alone, it ranks 58 of 1,570 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for California on its state page.
Lake Arrowhead and the insurance market
Lake Arrowhead's 100th-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.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
With 70.8% of Lake Arrowhead in Direct exposure, defensible-space clearing and ember-resistant construction (vents, Class-A roofing) address the exposure this page's own numbers describe, not a generic checklist. See the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 9,349 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Lake Arrowhead. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Lake Arrowhead, see the exposure-zones guide.