Federal Disaster Declaration Monitor — FEMA, By State/County

The Severe Weather Business Impact Monitor (#72) is real-time and expires in hours. A FEMA disaster declaration is different: it's the official, after-the-fact federal determination that unlocks specific relief — individual assistance grants, public-assistance reimbursement for local governments and nonprofits, SBA disaster loans, IRS tax-deadline extensions. Businesses, insurers, and disaster-recovery contractors need to know when a county they operate in gets declared, not just when a storm passes through.

Input

{ "watchlist": [{ "state": "CA", "county": "Calaveras" }], "daysBack": 90 }

State is required; county is optional — omit it to watch every declaration statewide instead of one county.

Sample output

{
  "state": "CA",
  "county": "Calaveras (County)",
  "declarationTitle": "GANN FIRE",
  "declarationTypeLabel": "Fire Management Assistance",
  "declarationDate": "2026-08-04T00:00:00.000Z",
  "individualAssistance": false,
  "publicAssistance": true,
  "hazardMitigation": false,
  "assistancePrograms": "Public Assistance (reimbursement for local govts/nonprofits)"
}

Typical uses

• Disaster-recovery contractor lead generation — know within a day which counties just became eligible for public-assistance-funded rebuild work.
• Insurance claims/underwriting — track official disaster status across a portfolio of insured locations.
• Tax/legal compliance — a federal declaration can trigger IRS filing-deadline extensions for affected taxpayers.
• Business continuity — know when a supplier's or facility's county gets declared, separate from just knowing weather happened there.

Pricing

$2.50 / 1,000 results ($0.0025 per matched declaration).

⚠️ Read before you act

• A declaration is not the same as an active weather event. It's the official federal determination, issued after a request-and-review process — sometimes days or weeks after the incident. Pair with #72 for real-time alerts before a declaration exists.
• The assistance program flags are what matters most. A declaration with no individualAssistance/publicAssistance/hazardMitigation flags set unlocks essentially nothing for most buyers — check assistancePrograms, not just whether a declaration exists.
• County matching is word-boundary text matching against FEMA's own designatedArea field (usually "<County> (County)") — verify the exact county name FEMA uses if a specific watch entry isn't matching as expected.

FAQ

• Do I need an API key? No — FEMA's OpenFEMA API is free and keyless.
• What's the difference between DR, EM, and FM declaration types? DR = Major Disaster, EM = Emergency, FM = Fire Management Assistance — each triggers a different scope of federal response; declarationTypeLabel spells it out.
• Can I watch an entire state? Yes — omit county from a watchlist entry to match every declaration in that state.

Related actors

• Severe Weather Business Impact Monitor — real-time NWS alerts by specific location, the layer before a FEMA declaration exists.
• Recall Exposure Monitor — the same watchlist-matched-against-an- official-feed pattern, for CPSC product recalls instead of disasters.