Manchester, CA
Manchester, CA's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
Manchester sits at the 76th percentile nationally for wildfire risk to structures — well above the national norm for wildfire risk — per USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model, built from its 194 counted buildings, not vegetation cover alone. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Manchester's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 76th percentile nationally.
Manchester's building exposure, zone by zone
Direct exposure dominates in Manchester: 99.5% of its 194 buildings, versus 0.5% Indirect and 0% Minimal. Clearing space around a structure changes the outcome here more than any single building-material swap.
Where Manchester ranks
Inside California, Manchester sits at just the 35th percentile even though it scores 76th nationally — the state's overall wildfire exposure is high enough to make this a relatively quiet corner of it. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Manchester ranks 7,586 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 25,055 by building count (1 is largest). Within California alone, it ranks 1,029 of 1,570 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for California on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Manchester
Manchester's 76th-percentile score lands in California, the only two states requiring a wildfire disclosure at sale. California's surplus-lines homeowners market passed 300,000 policies for the first time in 2025, driven by carriers pulling back from wildfire-exposed areas statewide. The disclosure-law guide covers what it requires.
What would actually reduce this score
Manchester's 99.5% Direct-exposure share means lot clearing around the structure typically outweighs any single material upgrade here. The home-hardening guide ranks the options for a place shaped like this.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Manchester's 7,586-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Manchester, see the exposure-zones guide.