Needles, CA
Needles, CA's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
Needles's 3,224 buildings earn a 68th-percentile wildfire-risk score nationally under USFS's model — well above the national norm for wildfire risk. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Needles at the 66th percentile, close to its 68th-percentile risk score.
Needles's building exposure, zone by zone
3,224 buildings are counted in Needles, and 93.6% of them are Indirect exposure — ember-driven risk rather than the 6.2% in Direct exposure or the 0.2% rated Minimal.
Where Needles ranks
Needles's 68th national percentile looks worse in isolation than its 25th ranking inside California does — this place is on the milder end for its own state, by 43 points. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Needles ranks 10,074 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 5,137 by building count (1 is largest). Within California alone, it ranks 1,174 of 1,570 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for California on its state page.
Needles and the insurance market
Needles's 68th-percentile score lands in California, the only two states requiring a wildfire disclosure at sale. California's surplus-lines homeowners market passed 300,000 policies for the first time in 2025, driven by carriers pulling back from wildfire-exposed areas statewide. The disclosure-law guide covers what it requires.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Because 93.6% of Needles's buildings sit in the Indirect zone, sealing the ember pathway (vents, roofing, gutters) is the intervention this page's data actually supports — see the home-hardening guide.
Where Needles's figures come from
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 3,224 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Needles. The exposure-zones guide covers what Needles's dominant indirect exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.