Whitmore, CA
How exposed is Whitmore to wildfire?
Whitmore sits at the 98th percentile nationally for wildfire risk to structures — in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — per USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model, built from its 267 counted buildings, not vegetation cover alone. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Whitmore at the 97th percentile, close to its 98th-percentile risk score.
Where Whitmore's buildings actually sit
267 buildings are counted in Whitmore, and 100% of them sit in USFS's Direct exposure zone — flame contact, not just ember cast, is the live possibility for most of them, against 0% rated Minimal.
How Whitmore compares
Whitmore's 98th national percentile looks worse in isolation than its 82nd ranking inside California does — this place is on the milder end for its own state, by 16 points. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Whitmore ranks 754 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 22,598 by building count (1 is largest). Within California alone, it ranks 295 of 1,570 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for California on its state page.
Whitmore and the insurance market
Because Whitmore is in California, a wildfire-hazard disclosure is legally required before a sale closes here — unusual nationally, since only these two states mandate it. The state's FAIR Plan alone carried 668,609 policies by the end of 2025. Full detail in the disclosure-law guide.
What would actually reduce this score
Whitmore's 100% Direct-exposure share means lot clearing around the structure typically outweighs any single material upgrade here. The home-hardening guide ranks the options for a place shaped like this.
More on how this number was built
Whitmore's 98th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Whitmore, see the exposure-zones guide.