Pioneer, CA
Pioneer, CA's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
Out of every US place USFS scores, Pioneer lands at the 100th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — a figure built from its 780 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Pioneer at the 99th percentile, close to its 100th-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
780 buildings are counted in Pioneer, and 99.9% 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.
Where Pioneer ranks
Pioneer's risk sits at a similar level relative to California (94th percentile statewide) as it does nationally (100th) — this place isn't unusual for its own state either way. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Pioneer ranks 154 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 13,812 by building count (1 is largest). Within California alone, it ranks 98 of 1,570 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for California on its state page.
Pioneer and the insurance market
Because Pioneer 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.
What would actually reduce this score
Because Direct exposure dominates in Pioneer (99.9%), the highest-leverage fix is defensible space, not roofing or vents alone — covered in the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Pioneer's 154-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Pioneer, see the exposure-zones guide.