Scotts Valley, CA
Scotts Valley wildfire risk explained
Scotts Valley sits at the 74th 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 4,610 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 Scotts Valley at the 76th percentile, close to its 74th-percentile risk score.
Scotts Valley's building exposure, zone by zone
USFS puts 70.7% of Scotts Valley's 4,610 buildings in the Indirect exposure zone, versus 29.4% Direct and 0% Minimal — a place where the fire doesn't need to reach the structure directly for embers to.
How Scotts Valley compares
Scotts Valley ranks lower within California (32nd percentile statewide) than its 74th national percentile suggests alone — a calmer spot in a state where wildfire risk generally runs high. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Scotts Valley ranks 8,154 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 3,689 by building count (1 is largest). Within California alone, it ranks 1,071 of 1,570 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for California on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Scotts Valley
Because Scotts Valley 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 70.7% of Scotts Valley'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.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Scotts Valley's 8,154-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Scotts Valley, see the exposure-zones guide.