Walnut, CA
Walnut wildfire risk explained
Out of every US place USFS scores, Walnut lands at the 73rd percentile for wildfire risk to structures — well above the national norm for wildfire risk — a figure built from its 9,827 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Walnut at the 74th national percentile — 1 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 4.8% of Walnut's 9,827 buildings carry Direct exposure and 0% carry Indirect; the remaining 95.2% are Minimal, which shifts the risk driving this page's score toward the surrounding landscape rather than any one structure. At 9,827 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
How Walnut compares
Walnut's 73rd national percentile looks worse in isolation than its 31st 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, Walnut ranks 8,563 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 1,651 by building count (1 is largest). Within California alone, it ranks 1,090 of 1,570 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for California on its state page.
Walnut and the insurance market
Walnut 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 73rd-percentile score like Walnut's can end up mattering for. More on the disclosure law.
What would actually reduce this score
Even with 95.2% of Walnut outside USFS's Direct and Indirect zones, basic hardening — gutter maintenance, ember-resistant vents — is inexpensive relative to the regional burn-probability risk noted above. Details in the home-hardening guide.
Where Walnut's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Walnut's 8,563-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Walnut's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.