Mountain Gate, CA
How exposed is Mountain Gate to wildfire?
Mountain Gate's 548 buildings earn a 98th-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 Gate at the 97th national percentile — 1 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
548 buildings are counted in Mountain Gate, and 73% of them sit in USFS's Direct exposure zone — flame contact, not just ember cast, is the live possibility for most of them, against 0% rated Minimal.
Where Mountain Gate ranks
Inside California, Mountain Gate sits at just the 81st percentile even though it scores 98th nationally — the state's overall wildfire exposure is high enough to make this a relatively quiet corner of it. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Mountain Gate ranks 751 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 16,597 by building count (1 is largest). Within California alone, it ranks 292 of 1,570 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for California on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Mountain Gate
Because Mountain Gate 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.
What would actually reduce this score
Because Direct exposure dominates in Mountain Gate (73%), the highest-leverage fix is defensible space, not roofing or vents alone — covered in the home-hardening guide.
Where Mountain Gate's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Mountain Gate's 751-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Mountain Gate's dominant direct exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.