Monterey, CA
Monterey, CA's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
Out of every US place USFS scores, Monterey lands at the 78th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — well above the national norm for wildfire risk — a figure built from its 10,733 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Monterey at the 77th percentile, close to its 78th-percentile risk score.
Where Monterey's buildings actually sit
Monterey rates 74.2% Minimal exposure against just 14% Direct and 11.9% Indirect — of 10,733 buildings counted, few sit close enough to burnable vegetation for USFS to flag them individually. At 10,733 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
How Monterey compares
Monterey ranks lower within California (37th percentile statewide) than its 78th national percentile suggests alone — a calmer spot in a state where wildfire risk generally runs high. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Monterey ranks 6,959 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 1,479 by building count (1 is largest). Within California alone, it ranks 985 of 1,570 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for California on its state page.
Monterey and the insurance market
Because Monterey 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.
Hardening a home in Monterey
Monterey's 74.2% 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 Monterey's figures come from
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 10,733 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Monterey. The exposure-zones guide covers what Monterey's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.