Menlo Park, CA
Menlo Park wildfire risk explained
Menlo Park's 11,162 buildings earn a 63rd-percentile wildfire-risk score nationally under USFS's model — well above the national norm for wildfire risk. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Menlo Park's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 65th percentile nationally.
Where Menlo Park's buildings actually sit
Only 13.1% of Menlo Park's 11,162 buildings carry Direct exposure and 10.6% carry Indirect; the remaining 76.4% are Minimal, which shifts the risk driving this page's score toward the surrounding landscape rather than any one structure. At 11,162 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Menlo Park against the rest of the country
Menlo Park's 63rd national percentile looks worse in isolation than its 21st ranking inside California does — this place is on the milder end for its own state, by 42 points. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Menlo Park ranks 11,651 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 1,418 by building count (1 is largest). Within California alone, it ranks 1,239 of 1,570 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for California on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Menlo Park
Because Menlo Park 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
Menlo Park's 76.4% Minimal-exposure share means structure-level hardening matters less here than it would elsewhere — still worth the low-cost basics, per the home-hardening guide.
Where Menlo Park's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Menlo Park's 11,651-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Menlo Park's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.