Lake Elsinore, CA
Lake Elsinore, CA's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
Out of every US place USFS scores, Lake Elsinore lands at the 97th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — a figure built from its 19,228 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Lake Elsinore's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 97th percentile nationally.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
USFS puts 79.6% of Lake Elsinore's 19,228 buildings in the Indirect exposure zone, versus 9.3% Direct and 11.1% Minimal — a place where the fire doesn't need to reach the structure directly for embers to. At 19,228 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
How Lake Elsinore compares
Inside California, Lake Elsinore sits at just the 80th percentile even though it scores 97th nationally — the state's overall wildfire exposure is high enough to make this a relatively quiet corner of it. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Lake Elsinore ranks 907 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 737 by building count (1 is largest). Within California alone, it ranks 320 of 1,570 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for California on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Lake Elsinore
Lake Elsinore 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 97th-percentile score like Lake Elsinore's can end up mattering for. More on the disclosure law.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Lake Elsinore's 79.6% 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
Lake Elsinore's 97th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Lake Elsinore, see the exposure-zones guide.