Palo Verde, CA
How exposed is Palo Verde to wildfire?
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Palo Verde at the 58th national percentile for risk to structures, modestly above the national average for wildfire risk — a score built from 246 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Palo Verde at the 59th percentile, close to its 58th-percentile risk score.
Palo Verde's building exposure, zone by zone
Most of Palo Verde's buildings (91.9%) sit in the Indirect zone, where wind-blown embers rather than flame front are the mechanism USFS is scoring — ember-resistant vents and non-combustible roofing are the interventions this pattern favors, more than defensible space alone.
Where Palo Verde ranks
Palo Verde ranks lower within California (16th percentile statewide) than its 58th national percentile suggests alone — a calmer spot in a state where wildfire risk generally runs high. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Palo Verde ranks 13,230 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 23,259 by building count (1 is largest). Within California alone, it ranks 1,319 of 1,570 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for California on its state page.
Palo Verde and the insurance market
Palo Verde's 58th-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.
Hardening a home in Palo Verde
Because 91.9% of Palo Verde's buildings sit in the Indirect zone, sealing the ember pathway (vents, roofing, gutters) is the intervention this page's data actually supports — see the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Palo Verde's 13,230-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Palo Verde, see the exposure-zones guide.