Ridgecrest, CA
Ridgecrest wildfire risk explained
Ridgecrest's 12,220 buildings earn a 37th-percentile wildfire-risk score nationally under USFS's model — close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Ridgecrest at the 44th national percentile — 7 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Ridgecrest rates 66.6% Minimal exposure against just 3.2% Direct and 30.2% Indirect — of 12,220 buildings counted, few sit close enough to burnable vegetation for USFS to flag them individually. At 12,220 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Ridgecrest against the rest of the country
Inside California, Ridgecrest sits at just the 5th percentile even though it scores 37th 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, Ridgecrest ranks 19,907 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 1,268 by building count (1 is largest). Within California alone, it ranks 1,498 of 1,570 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for California on its state page.
Ridgecrest and the insurance market
Ridgecrest's 37th-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.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
With 66.6% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, Ridgecrest gets less benefit from structure hardening than a Direct- or Indirect-dominant place would — the home-hardening guide explains why the zone matters.
Where Ridgecrest's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Ridgecrest's 19,907-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Ridgecrest's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.