California Wildfire Map — Live Fires & Containment

Homes in the wildland-urban interface

About 35% of California’s homes sit inside the wildland-urban interface — roughly 5.1 million of 14.4 million statewide, according to the SILVIS Lab’s 2020 dataset. The share varies sharply by county: heavily urbanized counties hold the largest absolute counts, while rural mountain counties have higher percentages.

The five California counties with the most homes in the wildland-urban interface:

• Los Angeles Countyabout 725,000 homes
• Riverside Countyabout 529,000 homes
• San Diego Countyabout 457,000 homes
• San Bernardino Countyabout 403,000 homes
• Contra Costa Countyabout 271,000 homes

Being in the interface is a description of geography, not a forecast of fire — it captures how close a building sits to vegetation that can burn. These classifications change slowly; the figures here come from the SILVIS Lab’s most recent revision of the 1990–2020 dataset, released February 2025.

What classifications cover California

The wildland-urban interface is the parts of the country where houses sit close enough to forest, brush, or grassland that wildfires can reach them. The national map of these areas, or WUI, is maintained by the SILVIS Lab at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. It marks a place as either inside or outside the interface; there are no severity grades.

California also publishes its own fire-hazard map, which grades land as Moderate, High, or Very High. CAL FIRE produces it through a state program called the Fire and Resource Assessment Program, or FRAP, and the map covers California only. No other state publishes an equivalent graded version.

CAL FIRE distinguishes fire hazard (the physical conditions that make wildfire possible) from fire risk (the potential for damage) — these zones map hazard, not risk.

Read the full explainer →

Fire hazard severity zones

California’s fire hazard severity zones come in two maps, divided by who is responsible for fire protection in each area. The State Responsibility Area, or SRA, covers rural and unincorporated land that CAL FIRE protects directly. The current SRA zone map took effect on April 1, 2024.

The Local Responsibility Area, or LRA, covers incorporated cities and some special districts, where local fire departments take the lead. CAL FIRE publishes a recommended LRA zone map; the current version was released on March 24, 2025, and local governments adopt it into their building codes.

See CAL FIRE’s fire hazard severity zones page.

Official California sources

• CAL FIRE — osfm.fire.ca.gov
• Cal OES (California Office of Emergency Services) — caloes.ca.gov

Related

• Named fires — a live page for every US wildfire over 1,000 acres
• How fire-risk is classified across the US
• What “active” vs “contained” means
• How does FireRiskHere know where you are?