Lawndale, CA
How exposed is Lawndale to wildfire?
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Lawndale at the 42nd national percentile for risk to structures, modestly above the national average for wildfire risk — a score built from 8,606 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Lawndale at the 51st national percentile — 9 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
USFS classifies 99.9% of Lawndale's buildings as Minimal exposure, the largest of the three zones here by a wide margin over 0.1% Direct and 0% Indirect — a landscape-level risk rather than a building-by-building one. At 8,606 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Lawndale against the rest of the country
Lawndale ranks lower within California (7th percentile statewide) than its 42nd national percentile suggests alone — a calmer spot in a state where wildfire risk generally runs high. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Lawndale ranks 18,176 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 1,935 by building count (1 is largest). Within California alone, it ranks 1,467 of 1,570 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for California on its state page.
Lawndale and the insurance market
Lawndale 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 42nd-percentile score like Lawndale's can end up mattering for. More on the disclosure law.
Hardening a home in Lawndale
With 99.9% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, Lawndale 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
Every one of the two percentiles behind Lawndale's 18,176-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Lawndale, see the exposure-zones guide.