San Mateo, CA
San Mateo wildfire risk explained
San Mateo's 25,699 buildings earn a 51st-percentile wildfire-risk score nationally under USFS's model — modestly above the national average for wildfire risk. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, San Mateo's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 51st percentile nationally.
San Mateo's building exposure, zone by zone
San Mateo rates 96.8% Minimal exposure against just 2.8% Direct and 0.4% Indirect — of 25,699 buildings counted, few sit close enough to burnable vegetation for USFS to flag them individually. At 25,699 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Where San Mateo ranks
San Mateo's 51st national percentile looks worse in isolation than its 11th ranking inside California does — this place is on the milder end for its own state, by 40 points. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, San Mateo ranks 15,401 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 489 by building count (1 is largest). Within California alone, it ranks 1,395 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
San Mateo's 51st-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.
What would actually reduce this score
With 96.8% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, San Mateo gets less benefit from structure hardening than a Direct- or Indirect-dominant place would — the home-hardening guide explains why the zone matters.
Where San Mateo's figures come from
San Mateo's 51st-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 San Mateo's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.