Rio del Mar, CA
How exposed is Rio del Mar to wildfire?
Rio del Mar sits at the 69th 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 4,749 counted buildings, not vegetation cover alone. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Rio del Mar at the 69th percentile, close to its 69th-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
USFS puts 62.3% of Rio del Mar's 4,749 buildings in the Indirect exposure zone, versus 16.5% Direct and 21.2% Minimal — a place where the fire doesn't need to reach the structure directly for embers to.
Where Rio del Mar ranks
Inside California, Rio del Mar sits at just the 26th percentile even though it scores 69th 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, Rio del Mar ranks 9,760 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 3,593 by building count (1 is largest). Within California alone, it ranks 1,156 of 1,570 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for California on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Rio del Mar
Because Rio del Mar 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 62.3% of Rio del Mar'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.
Where Rio del Mar's figures come from
Rio del Mar's 69th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Rio del Mar's dominant indirect exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.