Thermal, CA
How exposed is Thermal to wildfire?
Out of every US place USFS scores, Thermal lands at the 59th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — modestly above the national average for wildfire risk — a figure built from its 979 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Thermal at the 62nd national percentile — 3 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Only 44.8% of Thermal's 979 buildings carry Direct exposure and 1% carry Indirect; the remaining 54.1% are Minimal, which shifts the risk driving this page's score toward the surrounding landscape rather than any one structure.
Thermal against the rest of the country
Thermal's 59th national percentile looks worse in isolation than its 17th ranking inside California does — this place is on the milder end for its own state, by 42 points. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Thermal ranks 12,946 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 12,077 by building count (1 is largest). Within California alone, it ranks 1,308 of 1,570 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for California on its state page.
Thermal and the insurance market
Thermal 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 59th-percentile score like Thermal's can end up mattering for. More on the disclosure law.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Thermal's 54.1% Minimal-exposure share means structure-level hardening matters less here than it would elsewhere — still worth the low-cost basics, per the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Thermal's 59th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Thermal, see the exposure-zones guide.