Nipomo, CA
How exposed is Nipomo to wildfire?
Out of every US place USFS scores, Nipomo lands at the 83rd percentile for wildfire risk to structures — in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — a figure built from its 8,168 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 Nipomo at the 84th percentile, close to its 83rd-percentile risk score.
Nipomo's building exposure, zone by zone
53.4% of Nipomo's 8,168 buildings sit in USFS's Minimal exposure zone, with only 37.8% rated Direct — risk here comes from regional burn probability more than proximity to burnable vegetation at the structure itself. At 8,168 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Where Nipomo ranks
Nipomo's 83rd national percentile looks worse in isolation than its 46th ranking inside California does — this place is on the milder end for its own state, by 37 points. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Nipomo ranks 5,223 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 2,055 by building count (1 is largest). Within California alone, it ranks 853 of 1,570 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for California on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Nipomo sits in California, one of two states that legally require a wildfire-risk disclosure at sale. California's FAIR Plan, the state's insurer of last resort, ended 2025 with 668,609 residential policies after adding 21,859 in Q4 alone — the kind of market shift a 83rd-percentile score like Nipomo's can end up mattering for. More on the disclosure law.
What would actually reduce this score
Nipomo's 53.4% 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 Nipomo's figures come from
Nipomo's 83rd-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Nipomo's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.