San Clemente, CA
San Clemente wildfire risk explained
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts San Clemente at the 91st national percentile for risk to structures, in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — a score built from 20,911 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts San Clemente at the 93rd percentile, close to its 91st-percentile risk score.
Where San Clemente's buildings actually sit
73.5% of San Clemente's 20,911 buildings fall in USFS's Indirect exposure zone — ember cast rather than direct flame — against 4.3% Direct and 22.3% Minimal. Vent screens and roofing material matter more here than lot clearing alone. At 20,911 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
How San Clemente compares
San Clemente's 91st national percentile looks worse in isolation than its 64th ranking inside California does — this place is on the milder end for its own state, by 27 points. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, San Clemente ranks 2,826 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 670 by building count (1 is largest). Within California alone, it ranks 568 of 1,570 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for California on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in San Clemente
Because San Clemente 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.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
With ember exposure the dominant pattern in San Clemente (73.5% Indirect), vent screens and roofing material tend to matter more than lot clearing alone. The home-hardening guide covers both.
Where San Clemente's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind San Clemente's 2,826-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what San Clemente's dominant indirect exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.