Santa Maria, CA
Santa Maria, CA's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
Santa Maria 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 26,065 counted buildings, not vegetation cover alone. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Santa Maria's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 69th percentile nationally.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Santa Maria rates 63.7% Minimal exposure against just 2.2% Direct and 34.1% Indirect — of 26,065 buildings counted, few sit close enough to burnable vegetation for USFS to flag them individually. At 26,065 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
How Santa Maria compares
Santa Maria's 69th national percentile looks worse in isolation than its 27th ranking inside California does — this place is on the milder end for its own state, by 43 points. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Santa Maria ranks 9,635 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 479 by building count (1 is largest). Within California alone, it ranks 1,149 of 1,570 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for California on its state page.
Santa Maria and the insurance market
Because Santa Maria 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 63.7% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, Santa Maria gets less benefit from structure hardening than a Direct- or Indirect-dominant place would — the home-hardening guide explains why the zone matters.
Where Santa Maria's figures come from
Santa Maria'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 Santa Maria's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.