Westminster, CA
How exposed is Westminster to wildfire?
Westminster sits at the 72nd percentile nationally for wildfire risk to structures — well above the national norm for wildfire risk — per USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model, built from its 23,486 counted buildings, not vegetation cover alone. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Westminster at the 77th national percentile — 5 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 0.2% of Westminster's 23,486 buildings carry Direct exposure and 11.3% carry Indirect; the remaining 88.5% are Minimal, which shifts the risk driving this page's score toward the surrounding landscape rather than any one structure. At 23,486 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Where Westminster ranks
Westminster ranks lower within California (30th percentile statewide) than its 72nd national percentile suggests alone — a calmer spot in a state where wildfire risk generally runs high. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Westminster ranks 8,690 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 552 by building count (1 is largest). Within California alone, it ranks 1,095 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
Westminster 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 72nd-percentile score like Westminster's can end up mattering for. More on the disclosure law.
Hardening a home in Westminster
Westminster's 88.5% 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
Every one of the two percentiles behind Westminster's 8,690-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Westminster, see the exposure-zones guide.