Thornton, CA
How exposed is Thornton to wildfire?
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Thornton at the 71st national percentile for risk to structures, well above the national norm for wildfire risk — a score built from 471 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Thornton at the 70th national percentile — 1 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Where Thornton's buildings actually sit
Thornton rates 49.9% Minimal exposure against just 46.9% Direct and 3.2% Indirect — of 471 buildings counted, few sit close enough to burnable vegetation for USFS to flag them individually.
Thornton against the rest of the country
Thornton ranks lower within California (29th percentile statewide) than its 71st national percentile suggests alone — a calmer spot in a state where wildfire risk generally runs high. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Thornton ranks 9,006 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 17,848 by building count (1 is largest). Within California alone, it ranks 1,110 of 1,570 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for California on its state page.
Thornton and the insurance market
Thornton's 71st-percentile score lands in California, the only two states requiring a wildfire disclosure at sale. California's surplus-lines homeowners market passed 300,000 policies for the first time in 2025, driven by carriers pulling back from wildfire-exposed areas statewide. The disclosure-law guide covers what it requires.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Thornton's 49.9% 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
Thornton's 71st-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 Thornton, see the exposure-zones guide.