Norris Canyon, CA
How exposed is Norris Canyon to wildfire?
Norris Canyon's 485 buildings earn a 96th-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 Norris Canyon at the 97th national percentile — 1 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Where Norris Canyon's buildings actually sit
485 buildings are counted in Norris Canyon, and 82.9% 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.
Norris Canyon against the rest of the country
Inside California, Norris Canyon sits at just the 78th percentile even though it scores 96th 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, Norris Canyon ranks 1,158 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 17,607 by building count (1 is largest). Within California alone, it ranks 356 of 1,570 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for California on its state page.
Norris Canyon and the insurance market
Because Norris Canyon 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 82.9% of Norris Canyon 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
Every one of the two percentiles behind Norris Canyon's 1,158-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Norris Canyon, see the exposure-zones guide.