Orinda, CA
Orinda wildfire risk explained
USFS scores Orinda at the 89th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally), a figure built from 8,041 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Orinda at the 89th national percentile — 1 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
8,041 buildings are counted in Orinda, and 76.3% of them sit in USFS's Direct exposure zone — flame contact, not just ember cast, is the live possibility for most of them, against 4.8% rated Minimal. At 8,041 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Orinda against the rest of the country
Inside California, Orinda sits at just the 58th percentile even though it scores 89th 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, Orinda ranks 3,581 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 2,097 by building count (1 is largest). Within California alone, it ranks 660 of 1,570 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for California on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Orinda
Orinda's 89th-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
Orinda's 76.3% Direct-exposure share means lot clearing around the structure typically outweighs any single material upgrade here. The home-hardening guide ranks the options for a place shaped like this.
More on how this number was built
Orinda's 89th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Orinda, see the exposure-zones guide.