Williams, CA
Williams wildfire risk explained
Out of every US place USFS scores, Williams lands at the 49th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — modestly above the national average for wildfire risk — a figure built from its 2,009 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Williams at the 49th percentile, close to its 49th-percentile risk score.
Where Williams's buildings actually sit
USFS classifies 90.6% of Williams's buildings as Minimal exposure, the largest of the three zones here by a wide margin over 9.4% Direct and 0% Indirect — a landscape-level risk rather than a building-by-building one.
Where Williams ranks
Williams's 49th national percentile looks worse in isolation than its 10th ranking inside California does — this place is on the milder end for its own state, by 39 points. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Williams ranks 16,036 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 7,450 by building count (1 is largest). Within California alone, it ranks 1,418 of 1,570 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for California on its state page.
Williams and the insurance market
Williams 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 49th-percentile score like Williams's can end up mattering for. More on the disclosure law.
What would actually reduce this score
With 90.6% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, Williams gets less benefit from structure hardening than a Direct- or Indirect-dominant place would — the home-hardening guide explains why the zone matters.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Williams's 16,036-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Williams, see the exposure-zones guide.