Seal Beach, CA
Seal Beach, CA's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Seal Beach at the 68th national percentile for risk to structures, well above the national norm for wildfire risk — a score built from 6,925 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Seal Beach at the 73rd national percentile — 4 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Seal Beach's building exposure, zone by zone
Only 1.6% of Seal Beach's 6,925 buildings carry Direct exposure and 44.2% carry Indirect; the remaining 54.2% are Minimal, which shifts the risk driving this page's score toward the surrounding landscape rather than any one structure. At 6,925 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Seal Beach against the rest of the country
Seal Beach ranks lower within California (26th percentile statewide) than its 68th national percentile suggests alone — a calmer spot in a state where wildfire risk generally runs high. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Seal Beach ranks 9,947 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 2,502 by building count (1 is largest). Within California alone, it ranks 1,164 of 1,570 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for California on its state page.
Seal Beach and the insurance market
Seal Beach 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 Seal Beach's can end up mattering for. More on the disclosure law.
Hardening a home in Seal Beach
With 54.2% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, Seal Beach gets less benefit from structure hardening than a Direct- or Indirect-dominant place would — the home-hardening guide explains why the zone matters.
Where Seal Beach's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Seal Beach's 9,947-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Seal Beach's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.