Lake Wildwood, CA
How exposed is Lake Wildwood to wildfire?
Out of every US place USFS scores, Lake Wildwood lands at the 97th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — a figure built from its 2,717 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Lake Wildwood at the 96th national percentile — 1 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Lake Wildwood's building exposure, zone by zone
Direct exposure dominates in Lake Wildwood: 74.7% of its 2,717 buildings, versus 23.7% Indirect and 1.6% Minimal. Clearing space around a structure changes the outcome here more than any single building-material swap.
Where Lake Wildwood ranks
Inside California, Lake Wildwood sits at just the 79th 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 Wildwood ranks 936 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 5,901 by building count (1 is largest). Within California alone, it ranks 327 of 1,570 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for California on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Lake Wildwood
Lake Wildwood 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 Wildwood's can end up mattering for. More on the disclosure law.
What would actually reduce this score
With 74.7% of Lake Wildwood 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.
Where Lake Wildwood's figures come from
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 2,717 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Lake Wildwood. The exposure-zones guide covers what Lake Wildwood's dominant direct exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.