Los Osos, CA
How exposed is Los Osos to wildfire?
USFS scores Los Osos at the 95th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally), a figure built from 7,690 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Los Osos's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 95th percentile nationally.
Los Osos's building exposure, zone by zone
83.7% of Los Osos's 7,690 buildings fall in USFS's Indirect exposure zone — ember cast rather than direct flame — against 12.8% Direct and 3.5% Minimal. Vent screens and roofing material matter more here than lot clearing alone. At 7,690 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Where Los Osos ranks
Los Osos's 95th national percentile looks worse in isolation than its 73rd ranking inside California does — this place is on the milder end for its own state, by 22 points. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Los Osos ranks 1,695 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 2,218 by building count (1 is largest). Within California alone, it ranks 429 of 1,570 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for California on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Los Osos
Los Osos 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 95th-percentile score like Los Osos's can end up mattering for. More on the disclosure law.
Hardening a home in Los Osos
With ember exposure the dominant pattern in Los Osos (83.7% Indirect), vent screens and roofing material tend to matter more than lot clearing alone. The home-hardening guide covers both.
Where Los Osos's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Los Osos's 1,695-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Los Osos's dominant indirect exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.