Rancho Mirage, CA
How exposed is Rancho Mirage to wildfire?
Rancho Mirage sits at the 70th percentile nationally for wildfire risk to structures — well above the national norm for wildfire risk — per USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model, built from its 11,326 counted buildings, not vegetation cover alone. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Rancho Mirage's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 71st percentile nationally.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
58.2% of Rancho Mirage's 11,326 buildings sit in USFS's Minimal exposure zone, with only 3.4% rated Direct — risk here comes from regional burn probability more than proximity to burnable vegetation at the structure itself. At 11,326 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
How Rancho Mirage compares
Rancho Mirage's 70th national percentile looks worse in isolation than its 27th ranking inside California does — this place is on the milder end for its own state, by 43 points. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Rancho Mirage ranks 9,511 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 1,396 by building count (1 is largest). Within California alone, it ranks 1,147 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
Rancho Mirage 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 70th-percentile score like Rancho Mirage's can end up mattering for. More on the disclosure law.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
With 58.2% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, Rancho Mirage gets less benefit from structure hardening than a Direct- or Indirect-dominant place would — the home-hardening guide explains why the zone matters.
Where Rancho Mirage's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Rancho Mirage's 9,511-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Rancho Mirage's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.