FEMA Disaster Declarations & NFIP Flood Claims (OpenFEMA)

Get federal disaster declarations and National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) claims and policies from FEMA's official OpenFEMA API — filtered by state, county, ZIP code, census tract, dates, flood zone or flood event, as clean rows or as ready-made summaries (claims and dollars paid per county, ZIP, year, flood zone…).

Built for statistical analysis, research, reporting and public records on disasters and flood losses: researchers, journalists, emergency-management and public-sector analysts, and insurance or catastrophe-risk analysts who study areas (states, counties, ZIP codes, census tracts) rather than individual properties, without writing OData queries.

OpenFEMA use conditions (summary). FEMA lets you use this data only for statistical research or as a reporting record. Do not use it to make decisions about a specific person or property that could affect someone's rights or eligibility for benefits (for example a loan, insurance or benefit decision about one home), and do not try to re-identify the people behind the NFIP records. FEMA may withdraw access if it believes a use does not serve the public interest. Details: Data source, attribution and terms of use.

• Current NFIP endpoints (v3). FEMA removes the old FimaNfipClaims / FimaNfipPolicies v2 datasets on October 15, 2026 (their data is frozen at 06/01/2026). This Actor reads NfipClaims v3 and NfipPolicies v3.
• Nothing is cut off silently. Every run asks FEMA how many rows match and reports it ("1,932 matched, 100 returned"). Large result sets are paged by record id, so no rows are skipped between pages.
• Summaries in one run. summarizeBy: ["county", "year"] turns thousands of claim rows into one row per county and year with claim counts and total paid.
• Official API only, no key, no scraping. Requests go to www.fema.gov/api/open, one at a time, at least 15 seconds apart (the site's robots.txt crawl-delay).

Quick start — verified input

Leave the input empty ({}) or paste this — federal disaster declarations of the last 90 days, newest first:

{
  "mode": "disasterDeclarations",
  "daysBack": 90,
  "maxItems": 100
}

More verified examples:

{ "mode": "nfipClaims", "countyFips": ["22071"], "dateFrom": "2021-08-26", "dateTo": "2021-09-30", "maxItems": 100 }

NFIP claims in Orleans Parish, LA from Hurricane Ida's landfall to the end of September 2021.

{ "mode": "nfipClaims", "zipCodes": ["77096"], "summarizeBy": ["year"], "maxApiRequests": 10 }

Flood insurance claims and dollars paid per year in ZIP 77096 (Houston, Meyerland).

{ "mode": "nfipPolicies", "zipCodes": ["33139"], "inForceOn": "2026-01-01", "summarizeBy": ["floodZone"], "maxApiRequests": 10 }

NFIP policies in force on January 1, 2026 in ZIP 33139 (Miami Beach), by flood zone, with coverage and premiums.

What you can get

Mode	FEMA dataset	One row per	Size
disasterDeclarations	Disaster Declarations Summaries v2	declared county / tribal area of a disaster (major disaster DR, emergency EM, fire management FM)	70,000+ rows since 1953, refreshed about every 20 minutes
nfipClaims	NFIP Redacted Claims v3	flood insurance claim transaction	2.7 million rows since 1970, monthly
nfipPolicies	NFIP Redacted Policies v3	flood insurance policy transaction	74 million rows since 2009, monthly

The NFIP datasets are FEMA's redacted public versions: no names, no street addresses, coordinates rounded to 0.1 degree, location given as ZIP code, county and census block group.

Input

Field	Modes	What it does
mode	all	disasterDeclarations (default), nfipClaims or nfipPolicies
states	all	USPS codes (TX, FL, PR); names and FIPS codes also work
countyFips	all	5-digit county FIPS, e.g. 48201 (Harris County, TX)
zipCodes	NFIP	5-digit ZIP codes
censusTracts	NFIP	11-digit census tract GEOIDs
dateFrom, dateTo	all	Inclusive dates (YYYY-MM-DD): declaration date, date of loss, or policy effective date
daysBack	declarations	Window used when dateFrom is empty (default 90)
incidentTypes	declarations	e.g. Hurricane, Flood, Fire, Severe Storm, Tornado
declarationTypes	declarations	DR, EM, FM
programsDeclared	declarations	Keep declarations where all listed programs apply: IA, IH, PA, HM
disasterNumbers	declarations	4337 or DR-4337-FL
updatedSince	declarations	Only rows FEMA added or changed since a date (for scheduled monitoring)
floodZones	NFIP	Rated flood zones, e.g. AE, VE, X; SFHA = all A and V zones
floodEvent	claims	Text in FEMA's event name, e.g. Harvey
minTotalPaid	claims	Building + contents + ICC paid at least this many USD
inForceOn	policies	Policies whose term covers this date and that were not cancelled by then
summarizeBy	NFIP	Up to 4 of state, county, zip, censusTract, year, month, floodZone, floodEvent, occupancyType, community
fieldSet	NFIP rows	all (about 85 FEMA columns) or essential (about 30 columns, 4x more rows per request)
maxItems	all	Most rows (or summary groups) to return, default 100, up to 200,000
maxApiRequests	all	Hard cap on requests to FEMA, default 20, up to 300

Output

Every row has FEMA's own fields under FEMA's own names, plus recordType, openFemaDataset and the attribution fields source, sourceUrl (the API endpoint, including its version), license and retrievedAt.

Disaster declaration row (abridged):

{
  "recordType": "disasterDeclaration",
  "openFemaDataset": "DisasterDeclarationsSummaries v2",
  "femaDeclarationString": "EM-3657-GA",
  "disasterNumber": 3657,
  "state": "GA",
  "declarationType": "EM",
  "declarationDate": "2026-10-09T00:00:00.000Z",
  "incidentType": "Tropical Storm",
  "declarationTitle": "HURRICANE ISAIAS",
  "paProgramDeclared": true,
  "incidentBeginDate": "2026-10-08T00:00:00.000Z",
  "fipsStateCode": "13",
  "fipsCountyCode": "071",
  "designatedArea": "Colquitt (County)",
  "derivedCountyFips": "13071",
  "derivedProgramsDeclared": ["PA"],
  "derivedDisasterPageUrl": "https://www.fema.gov/disaster/3657",
  "source": "FEMA OpenFEMA API - Disaster Declarations Summaries (v2)",
  "sourceUrl": "https://www.fema.gov/api/open/v2/DisasterDeclarationsSummaries",
  "license": "This product uses the Federal Emergency Management Agency's OpenFEMA API, but is not endorsed by FEMA. ...",
  "retrievedAt": "2026-10-12T18:28:18.201Z"
}

NFIP claim row (abridged): dateOfLoss, yearOfLoss, floodEvent ("Hurricane Ida"), state, countyCode, reportedZipCode, censusGeoid (block group), latitude/longitude (0.1°), ratedFloodZone, occupancyType, totalBuildingInsuranceCoverage, amountPaidOnBuildingClaim, amountPaidOnContentsClaim, buildingDamageAmount, waterDepth, … and derivedTotalAmountPaid.

Summary row — ZIP 77096 claims by year, the 2017 row (Hurricane Harvey), from a verified run on 2026-10-12 (abridged):

{
  "recordType": "nfipClaimsSummary",
  "groupBy": ["year"],
  "groupYear": 2017,
  "claimCount": 2550,
  "paidClaimCount": 2346,
  "totalPaid": 422405409.27,
  "averagePaidPerPaidClaim": 180053.46,
  "maxClaimPaid": 1312258.96,
  "summaryComplete": true,
  "rowsScanned": 6482,
  "rowsMatchingAtSource": 6482,
  "summaryNote": "Aggregated by this Actor from FEMA's NFIP Redacted Claims (v3) rows (NfipClaims v3); not an official FEMA statistic."
}

Policy summaries report both policyRows (FEMA policy transactions) and policyCountSum (the sum of FEMA's policyCount, i.e. insured units — one condominium master policy can cover hundreds of units). In the verified ZIP 33139 run, zone AE had 2,826 policy rows covering 22,789 units.

Fields added by this Actor

FEMA's values are passed through unchanged. Values computed by this Actor are always in fields that start with derived or in summary rows:

Field	Record type	Meaning
derivedCountyFips	declarations, policies	5-digit county FIPS (declarations: state + county code, null for statewide rows; policies: first 5 digits of the block group)
derivedProgramsDeclared	declarations	Programs flagged true: IA, IH, PA, HM
derivedDisasterPageUrl	declarations	Link to the disaster's page on fema.gov
derivedTotalAmountPaid	claims	Building + contents + ICC amounts paid
derivedCensusTract	claims, policies	11-digit census tract (first 11 digits of the block group)

The run's key-value store has a RUN_SUMMARY record: FEMA's match count, rows read and returned, requests used, whether the result is complete, and why a run stopped early.

Common input mistakes

You typed	Use instead
"countyFips": ["Harris County"]	"countyFips": ["48201"] (5-digit FIPS)
"states": ["TX"], "countyFips": ["22071"]	The county must be in the listed states — 22071 is Louisiana
"zipCodes": ["77096"] with mode: disasterDeclarations	ZIP codes exist only in the NFIP datasets (nfipClaims / nfipPolicies)
"incidentTypes": ["Derecho"]	FEMA files derechos under Severe Storm
"summarizeBy": ["floodEvent"] with nfipPolicies	Policies have no flood event; use year, floodZone, …
"dateFrom": "26/08/2021"	2021-08-26 (MM/DD/YYYY also works)

Empty results?

A run with 0 rows still succeeds and logs why. Typical causes:

• NFIP data lags the present by a month or more (FEMA refreshes it monthly), so a window covering only the last few weeks can be empty.
• The filters exclude each other (a county outside the chosen states, a flood zone that does not occur in the ZIP).
• An incident type spelled differently from FEMA's list (the log shows the known values).
• Disaster declarations list counties for most disasters since 1964 only.

Speed and limits

• At least 15 seconds between requests (FEMA's robots.txt crawl-delay). One request returns up to 5,000 declarations, 2,000 NFIP rows with all columns, or 8,000 NFIP rows with fieldSet: essential or for summaries.
• maxApiRequests caps a run; when it runs out, the rows read so far are kept and RUN_SUMMARY.complete is false. Summary rows then carry summaryComplete: false, so a partial summary is never mistaken for a full one.
• Runs stop 90 seconds before their timeout to save results.
• NFIP policies: filter by zipCodes or censusTracts for fast runs. FEMA needs about a minute per request for a whole state (74 million policy rows) and sometimes times out with HTTP 503; for such broad queries the run does not ask FEMA for a match count.
• Whole datasets (tens of millions of policy rows) are better downloaded from FEMA's OpenFEMA bulk files.
• This Actor does not query FEMA's flood maps (National Flood Hazard Layer), so it does not look up the flood zone of an address. The flood zone fields in NFIP rows are those recorded on each policy or claim.

Data source, attribution and terms of use

Data: FEMA OpenFEMA API — Disaster Declarations Summaries v2, NFIP Redacted Claims v3, NFIP Redacted Policies v3. Every row carries the endpoint (sourceUrl) and the retrieval time (retrievedAt) needed to cite it.

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).

The OpenFEMA Terms and Conditions apply to anyone who uses this data. In particular, FEMA asks users to agree that the data will be used solely for statistical research or as a reporting record; not to re-identify, or attempt to re-identify, the individuals whose data is aggregated, and not to publish facts that may lead to their identification; and not to use the data to make determinations that might affect an individual's rights or eligibility for benefits (FEMA notes that the data can be used to make decisions on program management). FEMA may rescind your use of the data if it believes the use does not serve the public interest, and you agree to stop using the data and destroy your copies if FEMA asks. When you publish results, cite the dataset and the access date and repeat the statement above. FEMA and DHS logos and seals may not be used without FEMA's or DHS's written permission.

Flood zones in this data are as recorded in NFIP transactions. They are not an official flood zone determination for any property.

Legal

• Unofficial. This Actor is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by FEMA, DHS or the U.S. Government.
• Public data only. It reads FEMA's public, free OpenFEMA API, without login, key or workaround, one request at a time.
• Your responsibility. You are responsible for using the data in line with the OpenFEMA Terms and Conditions and the laws that apply to you.
• Privacy / GDPR. The output contains no personal data: disaster declarations describe counties and tribal areas, and the NFIP datasets are FEMA's redacted public versions (no names, no street addresses, coordinates rounded to 0.1 degree). This Actor adds nothing that could identify a person and does not combine NFIP rows with addresses.