Pine Mountain Lake, CA
Pine Mountain Lake wildfire risk explained
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Pine Mountain Lake at the 99th national percentile for risk to structures, in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — a score built from 3,820 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Pine Mountain Lake at the 98th national percentile — 1 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Pine Mountain Lake's building exposure, zone by zone
Of Pine Mountain Lake's 3,820 counted buildings, 96.4% carry Direct exposure and only 0.5% carry Minimal — a lopsided split that puts defensible-space clearing ahead of vents or roofing as the intervention worth doing first.
Where Pine Mountain Lake ranks
There's little gap between Pine Mountain Lake's 99th national percentile and its 86th percentile inside California, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Pine Mountain Lake ranks 473 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 4,408 by building count (1 is largest). Within California alone, it ranks 219 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
Pine Mountain Lake's 99th-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 Pine Mountain Lake
With 96.4% of Pine Mountain Lake 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
Pine Mountain Lake's 99th-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 Pine Mountain Lake, see the exposure-zones guide.