Wildfire risk in San Francisco County spans a wide range across the places we scored. The overall score runs from 12.7 to 61.3, with a county median of 18.8.
We scored 116 points across San Francisco County on the same 0–100 scale a Satelife address report uses, and they do not land in one place. 3% of them come out High, while 65% are Low. Which end your own parcel sits at is not something a county map can tell you.
FEMA NRI also rates San Francisco County: all-hazards risk Very High · social vulnerability Relatively Moderate · community resilience Very High · annualised wildfire frequency 0.0000.
Sources: FEMA National Risk Index 1.20.0 (Dec 2025), county record · USFS Wildfire Risk to Communities v2.0, mean of the grid cells inside the county. Both describe the county as a whole, never an address in it.
What does your San Francisco County address score?
A county range shows the spread. Your parcel sits somewhere inside it — the report says where, and what to do about it.
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Most scored points fall in the Low tier (75 points), followed by Moderate (38 points).
Only 3 points are in High, and 0 points are in Very High.
Since 1984, recorded wildfire perimeters in the county account for 2 acres total, and 0% of the county has burned in that period.
In the county fire statistics, the largest fire is Elcamino (1988). It is listed at 1 acre and not in the county footprint.
The most recent large fire is Lincoln (1996). It is also listed at 1 acre and not in the county footprint.
An older event, Kirby Beach (1968), is listed at 115 acres and partly in the county.
Fire perimeters coloured by decade. Select a perimeter for its name, year and size.
Perimeter sources: NIFC Interagency Fire Perimeter History · largest on record: Elcamino 1988. Perimeters are simplified for display; acreage is the figure the source records.
The only community listed here is San Francisco (population 873,965). Its median scored wildfire risk point is 23.7, above the county median of 18.8.
For county-wide context, FEMA’s National Risk Index rates San Francisco County’s wildfire risk as "Very Low" and its wildfire expected annual loss as "Very Low." In the same FEMA index, the county’s all-hazards risk rating is "Very High."
The score is the median of the sampled points nearest that community — a community-scale indicator, not a score for any individual property in it. Population comes from the community's own record where the source carries one.
Terrain scores are mostly low in this county, with a median of 5.0. The highest terrain score, 40.0, is in San Francisco.
Vegetation and fuels are also mostly low at the median (5.0), but the highest scored location reaches 56.9 in San Francisco. These conditions contribute to why some blocks score noticeably higher than others.
Fire-weather scores are elevated across the scored points, with a median of 67.2. The highest scored point is 77.7 in unincorporated San Francisco County, while the low end is 66.9 near San Francisco.
Separate from fire weather, the USFS Wildfire Risk to Communities model reports a mean annual burn probability of 8.70% and a 90th-percentile cell value of 0.97%.
That same USFS model indicates 26.3% of the county can burn, and its mean conditional flame length is 4.91 feet.
Risk varies even within this small county footprint. The lowest and highest overall scored points are both labeled San Francisco, which shows that risk can shift a lot across short distances.
The middle of the county’s scored points is 18.8, but the upper end reaches 61.3. For a homeowner or buyer, that means the specific location matters more than the county name alone.
Each bar is what one part of the score covers across San Francisco County, on the same 0–100 scale. A long bar is a part of the risk that depends on where you are; a short one is the same almost everywhere.
The tick on each bar is the middle value. Tier boundaries — Moderate at 25, High at 50, Very High at 75 — are the faint lines behind them.
| Layer | Min | Median | Max | Lowest place | Highest place | Points |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Terrain | 5 | 5 | 40 | unincorporated San Francisco County | San Francisco | 116 |
| Vegetation & fuels | 5 | 5 | 56.9 | unincorporated San Francisco County | San Francisco | 116 |
| Hazard zone | 10 | 10 | 82.6 | unincorporated San Francisco County | unincorporated San Francisco County | 116 |
| Fire history | 5 | 5 | 95 | unincorporated San Francisco County | San Francisco | 116 |
| Fire weather | 66.9 | 67.2 | 77.7 | near San Francisco | unincorporated San Francisco County | 116 |
| Composite | 12.7 | 18.8 | 61.3 | San Francisco | San Francisco | 116 |
Independently of Satelife's layers, the USFS Wildfire Risk to Communities grid puts the county's mean annual burn probability at 8.70% (90th percentile cell: 0.97%), with a mean conditional flame length of 4.91 ft. 26% of the 9,501 grid cells inside the county carry burnable fuel at all.
Source: USFS Wildfire Risk to Communities v2.0 (ImageServer, county extent).
CAL FIRE has no mapped Fire Hazard Severity Zone at 64 of the 116 sampled points — the zones cover Local Responsibility Areas, and most of this county is state or federal land. At 16 of them the USFS grid above supplied the hazard reading instead; at the remaining 48 the hazard weight is renormalised away rather than scored as low.
116 sample points on a ~2.3 km grid, plus one at the centre of each community, weighted with the Satelife county profile v1 · median layer coverage 100%. Scores are 0–100 and comparable within the county, not across states.
At the property-search scale, hazard-zone scores in the county run from 10.0 to 82.6, with a median of 10.0. The highest hazard-zone score shown is in unincorporated San Francisco County.
Fire-history scores range from 5.0 to 95.0, with a median of 5.0. The highest fire-history score is in San Francisco.
Taken together with the tier counts, most locations score Low, but a smaller set of addresses reaches Moderate or High.
Find out where your San Francisco County parcel sits
Slope, the fuel touching the structure, the road out, the fire history within a mile — measured at your address, not averaged across the county.
Free to request · PDF report with a 0–100 score, the drivers behind it, and a mitigation plan
Every one of the 35 ZIP areas that touch San Francisco County — we run address-level reports in all of them. They are grouped by the median score of the points we sampled inside each, which is a neighbourhood-scale indicator and not a score for any property: two homes in the same ZIP routinely land in different tiers.
High 1 ZIP
Moderate 9 ZIPs
Low 5 ZIPs
No sampled point inside 20 ZIPs
94005 San Francisco · 94014 San Francisco · 94104 San Francisco · 94105 San Francisco · 94108 San Francisco · 94109 San Francisco · 94110 San Francisco · 94111 San Francisco · 94115 San Francisco · 94116 San Francisco · 94117 San Francisco · 94130 San Francisco · 94133 San Francisco · 94158 San Francisco · 94188 San Francisco · 94501 San Francisco · 94607 San Francisco · 94801 San Francisco · 94920 San Francisco · 94965 San Francisco
Grouped from 15 of 35 ZIP areas — the rest had no sample point fall inside them. The community shown is the nearest mapped place to the ZIP's centre.
ZIP areas are Census 2020 ZIP Code Tabulation Areas intersecting the county boundary.
No. The records here show 2 acres burned since 1984, which is 0% of the county area.
The most recent large fire is Lincoln (1996), listed at 1 acre and outside the county footprint.
FEMA’s National Risk Index rates San Francisco County’s wildfire risk as "Very Low" and its wildfire expected annual loss as "Very Low."
No. In the scored points, 0 are in Very High. Most are Low, with smaller counts in Moderate and High.
A county range shows the spread. An address-level Satelife report shows where in that spread your property actually sits — PDF, per-layer score, and a prioritized mitigation plan.
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