Lancaster, CA
Lancaster, CA's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
USFS scores Lancaster at the 89th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally), a figure built from 52,790 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Lancaster at the 88th percentile, close to its 89th-percentile risk score.
Where Lancaster's buildings actually sit
Lancaster rates 89% Minimal exposure against just 8.6% Direct and 2.4% Indirect — of 52,790 buildings counted, few sit close enough to burnable vegetation for USFS to flag them individually. At 52,790 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Lancaster against the rest of the country
Lancaster's 89th national percentile looks worse in isolation than its 59th ranking inside California does — this place is on the milder end for its own state, by 30 points. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Lancaster ranks 3,394 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 157 by building count (1 is largest). Within California alone, it ranks 639 of 1,570 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for California on its state page.
Lancaster and the insurance market
Lancaster 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 89th-percentile score like Lancaster's can end up mattering for. More on the disclosure law.
What would actually reduce this score
With 89% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, Lancaster gets less benefit from structure hardening than a Direct- or Indirect-dominant place would — the home-hardening guide explains why the zone matters.
More on how this number was built
Lancaster's 89th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Lancaster, see the exposure-zones guide.