Mountain Center, CA
How exposed is Mountain Center to wildfire?
Mountain Center's 127 buildings earn a 100th-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 Mountain Center at the 100th national percentile — 0 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Where Mountain Center's buildings actually sit
USFS classifies 100% of Mountain Center's buildings as Direct exposure, higher than its 0% Indirect share and far above its 0% Minimal share — a profile where 127 structures sit close enough to vegetation that lot clearing matters most.
How Mountain Center compares
There's little gap between Mountain Center's 100th national percentile and its 97th percentile inside California, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Mountain Center ranks 101 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 27,839 by building count (1 is largest). Within California alone, it ranks 65 of 1,570 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for California on its state page.
Mountain Center and the insurance market
Because Mountain Center 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
With 100% of Mountain Center in Direct exposure, defensible-space clearing and ember-resistant construction (vents, Class-A roofing) address the exposure this page's own numbers describe, not a generic checklist. See the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 127 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Mountain Center. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Mountain Center, see the exposure-zones guide.