Pacific Grove, CA
How exposed is Pacific Grove to wildfire?
Pacific Grove's 7,148 buildings earn a 45th-percentile wildfire-risk score nationally under USFS's model — modestly above the national average 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 Pacific Grove at the 48th percentile, close to its 45th-percentile risk score.
Where Pacific Grove's buildings actually sit
Most of Pacific Grove's buildings (91.7% of 7,148) 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 7,148 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
How Pacific Grove compares
Inside California, Pacific Grove sits at just the 8th percentile even though it scores 45th 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, Pacific Grove ranks 17,227 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 2,399 by building count (1 is largest). Within California alone, it ranks 1,447 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
Pacific Grove 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 45th-percentile score like Pacific Grove's can end up mattering for. More on the disclosure law.
Hardening a home in Pacific Grove
Pacific Grove's 91.7% 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 Pacific Grove's figures come from
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 7,148 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Pacific Grove. The exposure-zones guide covers what Pacific Grove's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.