Newport Beach, CA
Newport Beach wildfire risk explained
Newport Beach's 31,159 buildings earn a 88th-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.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Newport Beach at the 88th percentile, close to its 88th-percentile risk score.
Where Newport Beach's buildings actually sit
Most of Newport Beach's buildings (87.5% of 31,159) fall outside USFS's Direct and Indirect zones entirely — that doesn't zero out the score above, it means the risk is regional, not structure-by-structure. At 31,159 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Newport Beach against the rest of the country
Inside California, Newport Beach sits at just the 56th percentile even though it scores 88th 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, Newport Beach ranks 3,872 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 361 by building count (1 is largest). Within California alone, it ranks 692 of 1,570 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for California on its state page.
Newport Beach and the insurance market
Newport Beach's 88th-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.
What would actually reduce this score
With 87.5% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, Newport Beach gets less benefit from structure hardening than a Direct- or Indirect-dominant place would — the home-hardening guide explains why the zone matters.
Where Newport Beach's figures come from
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 31,159 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Newport Beach. The exposure-zones guide covers what Newport Beach's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.