Mammoth Lakes, CA
Mammoth Lakes wildfire risk explained
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Mammoth Lakes at the 91st national percentile for risk to structures, in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — a score built from 4,686 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Mammoth Lakes at the 88th national percentile — 3 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Mammoth Lakes's building exposure, zone by zone
USFS puts 70.6% of Mammoth Lakes's 4,686 buildings in the Indirect exposure zone, versus 29.4% Direct and 0% Minimal — a place where the fire doesn't need to reach the structure directly for embers to.
Mammoth Lakes against the rest of the country
Mammoth Lakes's 91st national percentile looks worse in isolation than its 63rd ranking inside California does — this place is on the milder end for its own state, by 28 points. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Mammoth Lakes ranks 2,985 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 3,631 by building count (1 is largest). Within California alone, it ranks 589 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
Mammoth Lakes 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 91st-percentile score like Mammoth Lakes's can end up mattering for. More on the disclosure law.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Because 70.6% of Mammoth Lakes'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.
Where Mammoth Lakes's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Mammoth Lakes's 2,985-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Mammoth Lakes's dominant indirect exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.