Seacliff, CA
Seacliff wildfire risk explained
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Seacliff at the 68th national percentile for risk to structures, well above the national norm for wildfire risk — a score built from 1,603 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Seacliff at the 66th national percentile — 2 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
USFS puts 94.5% of Seacliff's 1,603 buildings in the Indirect exposure zone, versus 4.9% Direct and 0.6% Minimal — a place where the fire doesn't need to reach the structure directly for embers to.
Seacliff against the rest of the country
Seacliff's 68th national percentile looks worse in isolation than its 25th 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, Seacliff ranks 10,075 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 8,758 by building count (1 is largest). Within California alone, it ranks 1,175 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
Seacliff 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 68th-percentile score like Seacliff's can end up mattering for. More on the disclosure law.
What would actually reduce this score
Seacliff's 94.5% 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 Seacliff's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Seacliff's 10,075-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Seacliff's dominant indirect exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.