FEMA Disaster Declarations & ZIP Damage Data Scraper

Pull federal disaster declarations and ZIP-code-level homeowner inspection damage and approved Individual and Households Program (IHP) financial assistance totals from the official OpenFEMA v2 API. Filter by dataset mode (ZIP_DAMAGE or DECLARATIONS), US state or territory, declaration date, incident type, and minimum inspected damage.

Disclaimer: This Actor is an independent open-data integration tool and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) or the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

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What it does

• Queries two official OpenFEMA v2 datasets: DisasterDeclarationsSummaries and HousingAssistanceOwners.
• ZIP_DAMAGE mode (default): Joins disaster declaration metadata (declarationTitle, incidentType, declarationDate) with HousingAssistanceOwners records on disasterNumber to output ZIP-level homeowner registrations, FEMA property inspection counts, FEMA-inspected damage dollar estimates, official damage tier buckets ($1–$10k, $10k–$20k, $20k–$30k, >$30k), and approved IHP repair/replacement, rental, and Other Needs Assistance amounts.
• DECLARATIONS mode: Outputs county- and area-level federal disaster declarations (DR, EM, FM) with program flags (ihProgramDeclared, iaProgramDeclared, paProgramDeclared, hmProgramDeclared) and FIPS county codes.
• Suppresses small cells for privacy: ZIP_DAMAGE rows with validRegistrations below 3 are dropped before pushing, and the run status message reports how many rows were suppressed.
• Validates every output row against the schema before pushing, deduplicates on natural keys (disasterNumber + zipCode + city + county in ZIP_DAMAGE mode, matching the source grain, since one ZIP and city can span two counties; femaDeclarationString + fipsCountyCode + designatedArea in DECLARATIONS mode, since tribal designated areas share FIPS county code 000), and sorts newest first by declarationDate descending and totalDamage descending.

Who it's for

• Property insurance & catastrophe risk teams analyzing ZIP-level FEMA-inspected storm, flood, hurricane, and wildfire damage severity.
• Building materials & restoration market analysts sizing post-disaster repair demand across affected counties and postal codes.
• Municipal resilience, housing & public policy researchers tracking federal IHP assistance disbursements and inspection outcomes.
• Real estate & mortgage risk analysts monitoring recent federal disaster declarations by county and ZIP code.

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Input

Field	Type	Default / Prefill	Description
mode	string (enum)	"ZIP_DAMAGE"	"ZIP_DAMAGE" for ZIP-level homeowner inspection damage and approved IHP assistance, or "DECLARATIONS" for county/area-level federal disaster declarations.
states	array of strings	["FL"]	Two-letter US state or territory postal codes (e.g. ["FL"], ["WV", "OH", "WI"]). Leave empty for all states.
declaredSince	string	"" (365 days ago)	Earliest declarationDate in YYYY-MM-DD format. When left blank in ZIP_DAMAGE mode, defaults to 365 days ago; if no ZIP damage rows are collected in that window, the lookback automatically widens (800 days, then 1095 days) and the run status message discloses the expansion.
incidentTypes	array of strings	[]	Optional OpenFEMA incidentType filters (e.g. ["Hurricane", "Severe Storm", "Flood"]).
minTotalDamageUsd	number	0	Minimum ZIP-level totalDamage in USD (ZIP_DAMAGE mode only).
maxItems	integer	200	Maximum number of records to return, sorted newest first.

Example input JSON

{
  "mode": "ZIP_DAMAGE",
  "states": ["FL"],
  "declaredSince": "",
  "incidentTypes": [],
  "minTotalDamageUsd": 0,
  "maxItems": 200
}

Example run options (default max charge $50, 256 MB, 300 s timeout)

When starting a run via the Apify API or Console, set a default maximum charge limit of $50 ("maxTotalChargeUsd": 50), 256 MB of memory ("memoryMbytes": 256), and a 300 second timeout ("timeoutSecs": 300):

{
  "maxTotalChargeUsd": 50,
  "memoryMbytes": 256,
  "timeoutSecs": 300
}

The Actor checks your remaining spending limit before every dataset push and stops cleanly if the limit is reached.

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Output

Output fields (ZIP_DAMAGE mode)

Field	Type	Description
disasterNumber	integer	FEMA disaster number (e.g. 4834).
declarationTitle	string | null	Official FEMA disaster declaration title.
incidentType	string | null	FEMA incident type (Hurricane, Severe Storm, Flood, Fire, Tornado, etc.).
declarationDate	string	Disaster declaration date in YYYY-MM-DD format.
state	string	Two-letter US state or territory postal code.
county	string | null	County name.
city	string | null	City name.
zipCode	string | null	5-digit postal ZIP code.
validRegistrations	integer | null	Count of valid FEMA Individual Assistance homeowner registrations in the ZIP/city.
totalInspected	integer | null	Total number of homeowner properties inspected by FEMA.
totalDamage	number | null	Total FEMA-inspected homeowner property damage in USD.
averageFemaInspectedDamage	number | null	Average FEMA-inspected damage per inspected registration in USD.
noFemaInspectedDamage	integer | null	Count of inspected homes with no FEMA-inspected damage.
femaInspectedDamageBetween1And10000	integer | null	Count of inspected homes with damage between $1 and $10,000.
femaInspectedDamageBetween10001And20000	integer | null	Count of inspected homes with damage between $10,001 and $20,000.
femaInspectedDamageBetween20001And30000	integer | null	Count of inspected homes with damage between $20,001 and $30,000.
femaInspectedDamageGreaterThan30000	integer | null	Count of inspected homes with damage greater than $30,000.
approvedForFemaAssistance	integer | null	Count of homeowner registrations approved for FEMA IHP financial assistance.
totalApprovedIhpAmount	number | null	Total approved Individual and Households Program (IHP) dollar amount in USD.
repairReplaceAmount	number | null	Approved housing repair and replacement assistance amount in USD.
rentalAmount	number | null	Approved temporary rental assistance amount in USD.
otherNeedsAmount	number | null	Approved Other Needs Assistance (ONA) amount in USD.

Output fields (DECLARATIONS mode)

In DECLARATIONS mode, each row includes disasterNumber, declarationTitle, incidentType, femaDeclarationString, declarationType, declarationDate, incidentBeginDate, incidentEndDate, state, designatedArea, fipsCountyCode, ihProgramDeclared, iaProgramDeclared, paProgramDeclared, and hmProgramDeclared.

Sample output row (synthetic example)

{
  "disasterNumber": 9901,
  "declarationTitle": "SYNTHETIC TROPICAL STORM EXAMPLE",
  "incidentType": "Hurricane",
  "declarationDate": "2026-09-18",
  "state": "FL",
  "county": "Example County (County)",
  "city": "EXAMPLE BAY",
  "zipCode": "33999",
  "validRegistrations": 4120,
  "totalInspected": 2840,
  "totalDamage": 18450230.5,
  "averageFemaInspectedDamage": 6496.56,
  "noFemaInspectedDamage": 633,
  "femaInspectedDamageBetween1And10000": 1520,
  "femaInspectedDamageBetween10001And20000": 410,
  "femaInspectedDamageBetween20001And30000": 185,
  "femaInspectedDamageGreaterThan30000": 92,
  "approvedForFemaAssistance": 2610,
  "totalApprovedIhpAmount": 14920800.0,
  "repairReplaceAmount": 9840500.0,
  "rentalAmount": 2150300.0,
  "otherNeedsAmount": 2930000.0
}

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How pricing works

Pay per result. You only pay for rows returned.

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Data source and terms

• Official Source: OpenFEMA API v2 (https://www.fema.gov/api/open/v2/DisasterDeclarationsSummaries and https://www.fema.gov/api/open/v2/HousingAssistanceOwners).
• Update Frequency: Updated daily by FEMA.
• Attribution (OpenFEMA terms, verbatim): "This product uses the Federal Emergency Management Agency's OpenFEMA API, but is not endorsed by FEMA. The Federal Government or FEMA cannot vouch for the data or analyses derived from these data after the data have been retrieved from the Agency's website(s)."
• Dataset and endpoint version: OpenFEMA API v2. This Actor cites and queries the v2 dataset endpoints DisasterDeclarationsSummaries v2 (https://www.fema.gov/api/open/v2/DisasterDeclarationsSummaries) and HousingAssistanceOwners v2 (https://www.fema.gov/api/open/v2/HousingAssistanceOwners). Cite the dataset version (v2) when you cite the data.
• Retrieval date: Each run retrieves data live from OpenFEMA at run time, and the Apify run record for that run records the retrieval date and time. Note the run date alongside any figure you publish, because FEMA revises and refreshes these datasets.
• Terms of Use: Use of OpenFEMA data is governed by the OpenFEMA terms and conditions (https://www.fema.gov/about/openfema/terms-conditions), not by an unrestricted grant. Under those terms, use the data for statistical research or as a reporting record only; do not attempt to reidentify any individual from the data, and do not use the data to make determinations affecting an individual's eligibility for any benefit, service, or other right. All records in HousingAssistanceOwners are aggregated by disaster, state, county, city, and ZIP code; no individual or household records are published, and this Actor further suppresses rows with validRegistrations below 3 to reduce reidentification risk (see Limits and FAQ).

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Troubleshooting (PARTIAL: status messages)

• If a run finishes with a status message starting with PARTIAL:, the Actor preserved and pushed all validated records collected before a paging cap, scan-time budget (240s), upstream HTTP retry exhaustion, or schema drift check was triggered.
• A PARTIAL: caused by a source problem (schema drift, source errors) ends with: "If this keeps happening, please open an issue on this actor's Issues tab and we'll fix it fast." A PARTIAL: caused only by your own limits (max items, charge limit, scan budget) does not carry that line.
• A PARTIAL: message naming inspections not yet published for DR-xxxx (declared YYYY-MM-DD); N registration-only rows means FEMA has published registrations for that disaster but no completed inspection results yet. The rows pushed are registration-only rows (all totalInspected values are 0), not damage findings. Re-run after FEMA publishes inspections for that disaster.
• A run whose filters match nothing finishes successfully with a Complete: 0 rows matched your filters status message naming the filters to widen.
• Found a problem or need a field? Open an issue on the Issues tab; we respond quickly.

Limits and FAQ

• Why does ZIP_DAMAGE mode only include certain disasters? FEMA's HousingAssistanceOwners dataset only contains rows for disasters where the Individuals and Households Program (ihProgramDeclared = true) was activated and homeowner inspections have been processed. Fire Management Assistance (FM) or Public Assistance-only (PA) declarations appear in DECLARATIONS mode but do not generate homeowner inspection rows.
• Why does a fresh disaster show registrations but zero inspected damage? Inspection lag. For a newly declared disaster, FEMA publishes HousingAssistanceOwners registration rows before field inspections are completed and published, so totalInspected, totalDamage, and the damage tier buckets can all be 0 even though registrations exist. When every row for a disaster has totalInspected equal to 0, the run ends PARTIAL: with a reason of the form inspections not yet published for DR-xxxx (declared YYYY-MM-DD); N registration-only rows, naming each affected disaster, instead of reporting a silent all-zero Complete. Wait for FEMA to publish inspections for that disaster (often days to weeks after declaration) and re-run.
• Why are some ZIP rows missing (small-cell suppression)? To reduce reidentification risk under the OpenFEMA terms, ZIP_DAMAGE rows with validRegistrations below 3 are suppressed (dropped) and are not pushed to the dataset. The run status message reports how many rows were suppressed.
• How are records deduplicated? In ZIP_DAMAGE mode, records are deduplicated by disasterNumber + zipCode + city + county, which is the grain the source publishes (a ZIP code and city that cross a county line produce one row per county, and each row is kept). In DECLARATIONS mode, records are deduplicated by femaDeclarationString + fipsCountyCode + designatedArea, because tribal designated areas all carry FIPS county code 000 and are distinct rows.
• Canary input: { "mode": "ZIP_DAMAGE", "states": ["WV"], "declaredSince": "2026-01-01", "incidentTypes": [], "minTotalDamageUsd": 0, "maxItems": 5 } returns 5 rows in a few seconds. A passing canary must also assert at least one returned row with totalInspected greater than 0; a canary where every row has totalInspected equal to 0 does not pass, because inspections for that disaster may not be published yet.

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Changelog

• v0.1.2 (2026-11-01): Fixes after Grok Red Team review: a disaster whose rows all have totalInspected equal to 0 now ends the run PARTIAL: naming the disaster and its declaration date (inspections not yet published) instead of a silent all-zero Complete; the verbatim OpenFEMA attribution statement, dataset endpoint version (v2) citation, retrieval-date note, and FEMA use conditions are documented and the earlier terms understatement is removed; small-cell rows with validRegistrations below 3 are suppressed and counted in the run status; default run options now set 256 MB memory and a 300 second timeout alongside the $50 max charge; the omitted noFemaInspectedDamage bucket is now output; source id is used as the paging tiebreak; Retry-After is honored in HTTP-date form as well as in seconds; the description now starts with "Scrape" and damage figures are described as FEMA-inspected estimates.

• v0.1.1 (2026-10-31): Fixes after review: dedupe keys now match the source grain (county added in ZIP_DAMAGE mode, designated area added in DECLARATIONS mode, so distinct rows are no longer dropped silently); a core-column check on the first record of every source page fails loudly on schema drift; runs where over 20% of rows fail validation now fail instead of shipping a partial dataset as complete; zero matches finish as Complete: 0 rows matched your filters instead of failing; the Issues-tab line is appended only to source-caused PARTIAL: messages; the charge-limit stop now reports as PARTIAL:; a lookback expansion beyond the default 365-day window is disclosed in the status message; status counts now report rows scanned per source and rows emitted separately.

• v0.1 (2026-10-31): Initial release supporting ZIP_DAMAGE and DECLARATIONS modes via OpenFEMA API v2 with schema validation, automatic lookback window expansion for default state runs, and pay-per-event spending limit protection.