West Menlo Park, CA
How exposed is West Menlo Park to wildfire?
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts West Menlo Park at the 62nd national percentile for risk to structures, well above the national norm for wildfire risk — a score built from 1,582 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks West Menlo Park at the 65th 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
Most of West Menlo Park's buildings (55.1% of 1,582) fall outside USFS's Direct and Indirect zones entirely — that doesn't zero out the score above, it means the risk is regional, not structure-by-structure.
West Menlo Park against the rest of the country
Inside California, West Menlo Park sits at just the 20th percentile even though it scores 62nd nationally — the state's overall wildfire exposure is high enough to make this a relatively quiet corner of it. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, West Menlo Park ranks 12,029 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 8,821 by building count (1 is largest). Within California alone, it ranks 1,262 of 1,570 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for California on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
West Menlo Park 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 62nd-percentile score like West Menlo Park's can end up mattering for. More on the disclosure law.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Even with 55.1% of West Menlo Park 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.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind West Menlo Park's 12,029-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond West Menlo Park, see the exposure-zones guide.