Montecito, CA
Montecito wildfire risk explained
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Montecito at the 90th national percentile for risk to structures, in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — a score built from 5,695 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Montecito at the 88th percentile, close to its 90th-percentile risk score.
Where Montecito's buildings actually sit
5,695 buildings are counted in Montecito, and 83.8% of them sit in USFS's Direct exposure zone — flame contact, not just ember cast, is the live possibility for most of them, against 11.2% rated Minimal. At 5,695 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
How Montecito compares
Montecito's 90th national percentile looks worse in isolation than its 62nd 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, Montecito ranks 3,111 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 3,037 by building count (1 is largest). Within California alone, it ranks 601 of 1,570 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for California on its state page.
Montecito and the insurance market
Because Montecito 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 Direct exposure dominates in Montecito (83.8%), the highest-leverage fix is defensible space, not roofing or vents alone — covered in the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 5,695 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Montecito. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Montecito, see the exposure-zones guide.