Merced, CA
Merced, CA's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
Merced's 25,530 buildings earn a 83rd-percentile wildfire-risk score nationally under USFS's model — in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Merced at the 85th national percentile — 1 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Merced's building exposure, zone by zone
Merced rates 64.2% Minimal exposure against just 4.8% Direct and 31% Indirect — of 25,530 buildings counted, few sit close enough to burnable vegetation for USFS to flag them individually. At 25,530 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Merced against the rest of the country
Merced ranks lower within California (46th percentile statewide) than its 83rd national percentile suggests alone — a calmer spot in a state where wildfire risk generally runs high. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Merced ranks 5,253 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 493 by building count (1 is largest). Within California alone, it ranks 854 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
Merced 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 83rd-percentile score like Merced's can end up mattering for. More on the disclosure law.
What would actually reduce this score
Merced's 64.2% 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 Merced's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Merced's 5,253-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Merced's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.