California and Texas dominate a new ranking of America’s most vulnerable cities for house fires in 2025, with multiple cities from both states placing in the top 20.
Four Texas cities also ranked among the top 15, including El Paso, Amarillo, Lubbock, and Pasadena.
The study compared the nation’s largest cities based on 27 metrics including wildfire risk, drought, access to both career and volunteer firefighters, percentage of homes using gas heating, average age of homes, and population density.
“It’s not surprising that so many Western cities were named in this report. Not only do you have very dry landscapes creating wildfire risks there but we also looked at the number of fire-protection services available to cover those areas,” Kimberly Magerl, a HomeGnome analyst, told The Epoch Times. HomeGnome connects homeowners with home service professionals.
Magerl noted this is the first time the company has conducted this particular study.
“We thought it was timely because of what was happening in California, and we want to help homeowners across the country to be able to property protect themselves in the event of a fire,” she said.
Simple precautions—such as installing smoke alarms, keeping space heaters away from flammable objects, ensuring that fireplaces are never unattended, and taking care when cooking—can reduce the risk of house fires, Magerl said.
“It’s also important that homeowners not overload electrical circuits by running too many appliances at once,” she said. “That can also often result in fires.”
While Pomona ranked the 12th highest city for wildfire risk, the study found that the city lacks fireproofing firms, chimneysweeps, and home repair services. It also ties with 24 other California cities with the worst traffic congestion.
Detroit ranked second on the list due to the high prevalence of home fires over the past five years and lack of fire alarms in residences. Homes in Detroit also have a median age of 76 years, and 84 percent use gas for heating.
Other cities on the Top 20 list included Wichita, Kansas; Tulsa, Oklahoma; Kansas City, Kansas; and Patterson, New Jersey.
Anne Russell, president of the Greater Los Angeles Association of Realtors, said the report came as no surprise, following the month-long wildfires that ravaged 57,000 acres in southern California.
“As a result, a lot of former homeowners are leaving the area and some are even moving out of state,” she told The Epoch Times. “One of my clients went to Washington state, and he’s not sure he’ll ever come back to California. He watched his home burn to the ground from his Ring Doorbell app.”
Russell noted other former homeowners are leaving temporarily, while deciding whether to rebuild or just sell the land and move on.
“The bigger problem is that much of the land is so toxic and will take several months to clear,” she said. “You had things like electric car batteries melting into the ground.”
Local realtors who had concentrated their businesses in the areas destroyed by the fires now have to find other areas to do business. In the meantime, people who want to remain in the region are still dealing with escalating rents and insurance costs.
Just recently, Russell was able to help a client obtain insurance for a Beverly Hills condominium, but when the lender reviewed the complex’s master insurance coverage, they determined it was not adequate and refused to process the loan.
“First-time homebuyers are being hit the hardest because they’re now competing with all of those who have been displaced,” noted Russell.
“On average, a fire department responded to a fire somewhere in the U.S. every 23 seconds in 2023,” its webpage states. “A civilian was fatally injured in a fire every 2 hours and 23 minutes. Every 39 minutes, a civilian suffered a non-fatal fire injury.”
The NFPA notes that non-home residential structures, such as hotels, motels, or dormitories, and non-residential properties, such as educational, institutional, retail, office, or manufacturing facilities, are usually more regulated than home properties.
Surprisingly, another California location ranked as the least vulnerable city for house fires in 2025. Sacramento offers the most fire stations per 100,000 residents, as well as career firefighters per 100,000 households.
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, ranked second as one of the safest cities when it comes to house fires, followed by Madison, Wisconsin; Honolulu, Hawaii; and Alexandria, Virginia. Irvine, California, ranked seventh, and three Texas cities—Dallas, Houston, and Laredo—also made the top 20 safest communities.
While New York was ranked as the thirty-ninth safest city, the Big Apple is home to the most fire alarm system companies and fire-protection services in the nation.
“It’s going to take a long time to rebuild here, but the idea is to build back better with non-flammable materials for homes,” Russell said. “What’s amazing is how strongly people gathered together in this time of need. It’s really a testament to the resilience of Californians in the wake of this devastation.”
