Lucerne, CA
How exposed is Lucerne to wildfire?
USFS scores Lucerne at the 99th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally), a figure built from 2,173 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Lucerne at the 98th national percentile — 1 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
USFS puts 84.7% of Lucerne's 2,173 buildings in the Indirect exposure zone, versus 14.2% Direct and 1.1% Minimal — a place where the fire doesn't need to reach the structure directly for embers to.
Where Lucerne ranks
Lucerne's risk sits at a similar level relative to California (89th percentile statewide) as it does nationally (99th) — this place isn't unusual for its own state either way. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Lucerne ranks 341 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 7,009 by building count (1 is largest). Within California alone, it ranks 170 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
Because Lucerne is in California, a wildfire-hazard disclosure is legally required before a sale closes here — unusual nationally, since only these two states mandate it. The state's FAIR Plan alone carried 668,609 policies by the end of 2025. Full detail in the disclosure-law guide.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Because 84.7% of Lucerne's buildings sit in the Indirect zone, sealing the ember pathway (vents, roofing, gutters) is the intervention this page's data actually supports — see the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Lucerne's 341-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Lucerne, see the exposure-zones guide.