San Rafael, CA
How exposed is San Rafael to wildfire?
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts San Rafael at the 80th national percentile for risk to structures, well above the national norm for wildfire risk — a score built from 16,257 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, San Rafael's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 81st percentile nationally.
Where San Rafael's buildings actually sit
Most of San Rafael's buildings (69.6%) sit in the Indirect zone, where wind-blown embers rather than flame front are the mechanism USFS is scoring — ember-resistant vents and non-combustible roofing are the interventions this pattern favors, more than defensible space alone. At 16,257 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
San Rafael against the rest of the country
Inside California, San Rafael sits at just the 41st percentile even though it scores 80th 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, San Rafael ranks 6,293 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 892 by building count (1 is largest). Within California alone, it ranks 932 of 1,570 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for California on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in San Rafael
San Rafael 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 80th-percentile score like San Rafael's can end up mattering for. More on the disclosure law.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
San Rafael's 69.6% Indirect-exposure share points at embers, not flame contact, as the main pathway — ember-resistant vents and non-combustible roofing rank ahead of defensible space here. Detail in the home-hardening guide.
Where San Rafael's figures come from
San Rafael's 80th-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 Rafael's dominant indirect exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.