Lake Shastina, CA
Lake Shastina wildfire risk explained
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Lake Shastina at the 90th national percentile for risk to structures, in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — a score built from 1,396 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 Lake Shastina at the 92nd percentile, close to its 90th-percentile risk score.
Where Lake Shastina's buildings actually sit
1,396 buildings are counted in Lake Shastina, and 79.6% of them are Indirect exposure — ember-driven risk rather than the 17.3% in Direct exposure or the 3.1% rated Minimal.
Where Lake Shastina ranks
Lake Shastina's 90th national percentile looks worse in isolation than its 61st ranking inside California does — this place is on the milder end for its own state, by 29 points. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Lake Shastina ranks 3,175 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 9,643 by building count (1 is largest). Within California alone, it ranks 607 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
Lake Shastina 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 90th-percentile score like Lake Shastina's can end up mattering for. More on the disclosure law.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
With ember exposure the dominant pattern in Lake Shastina (79.6% Indirect), vent screens and roofing material tend to matter more than lot clearing alone. The home-hardening guide covers both.
Where Lake Shastina's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Lake Shastina's 3,175-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Lake Shastina's dominant indirect exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.