Yuba City, CA
Yuba City, CA's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
Yuba City sits at the 81st 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 21,784 counted buildings, not vegetation cover alone. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Yuba City's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 81st percentile nationally.
Yuba City's building exposure, zone by zone
65.1% of Yuba City's 21,784 buildings sit in USFS's Minimal exposure zone, with only 3.5% rated Direct — risk here comes from regional burn probability more than proximity to burnable vegetation at the structure itself. At 21,784 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
How Yuba City compares
Inside California, Yuba City sits at just the 41st percentile even though it scores 81st 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, Yuba City ranks 6,109 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 631 by building count (1 is largest). Within California alone, it ranks 923 of 1,570 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for California on its state page.
Yuba City and the insurance market
Yuba City 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 81st-percentile score like Yuba City's can end up mattering for. More on the disclosure law.
What would actually reduce this score
With 65.1% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, Yuba City 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
Yuba City's 81st-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Yuba City, see the exposure-zones guide.