Shasta Lake, CA
How exposed is Shasta Lake to wildfire?
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Shasta Lake at the 98th national percentile for risk to structures, in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — a score built from 5,274 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Shasta Lake at the 98th percentile, close to its 98th-percentile risk score.
Shasta Lake's building exposure, zone by zone
5,274 buildings are counted in Shasta Lake, and 65.6% of them are Indirect exposure — ember-driven risk rather than the 34.4% in Direct exposure or the 0% rated Minimal. At 5,274 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Shasta Lake against the rest of the country
Shasta Lake scores 98th nationally and 85th within California — close enough that its state context doesn't change the picture the national number already gives. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Shasta Lake ranks 563 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 3,272 by building count (1 is largest). Within California alone, it ranks 244 of 1,570 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for California on its state page.
Shasta Lake and the insurance market
Shasta Lake 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 98th-percentile score like Shasta Lake's can end up mattering for. More on the disclosure law.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Shasta Lake's 65.6% 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 Shasta Lake's figures come from
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 5,274 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Shasta Lake. The exposure-zones guide covers what Shasta Lake's dominant indirect exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.