FEMA Disaster Declarations Tracker

The complete US federal disaster declarations database from FEMA, covering 69,000+ records of hurricanes, floods, fires, tornadoes, earthquakes, and more — dating back to 1953.

What data does it extract?

For each disaster declaration, the Actor extracts:

Field	Description
Declaration	FEMA declaration string (e.g., DR-4844-FL)
State	US state code
Incident type	Hurricane, Fire, Flood, Tornado, etc. (19 types)
Title	Disaster name (e.g., "HURRICANE MILTON")
Declaration date	When FEMA declared the disaster
County/Area	Specific affected county or tribal area
Declaration type	DR (Major Disaster), EM (Emergency), FM (Fire Management)
Incident dates	Begin and end dates of the incident
Programs	Which FEMA programs were activated (IH, IA, PA, HM)
FEMA Region	Federal region number (1-10)
FIPS codes	State and county FIPS codes for geographic mapping

Output example

{
  "femaDeclarationString": "DR-4844-FL",
  "disasterNumber": 4844,
  "state": "FL",
  "declarationType": "DR",
  "declarationDate": "2024-11-05T00:00:00.000Z",
  "yearDeclared": 2025,
  "incidentType": "Hurricane",
  "declarationTitle": "HURRICANE MILTON",
  "incidentBeginDate": "2024-10-05T00:00:00.000Z",
  "incidentEndDate": "2024-11-02T00:00:00.000Z",
  "disasterCloseoutDate": null,
  "county": "Hillsborough (County)",
  "fipsStateCode": "12",
  "fipsCountyCode": "057",
  "femaRegion": 4,
  "ihProgram": true,
  "iaProgram": false,
  "paProgram": true,
  "hmProgram": true,
  "tribalRequest": false,
  "scrapedAt": "2026-02-18T18:00:00.000Z",
  "sourceUrl": "https://www.fema.gov/api/open/v2/DisasterDeclarationsSummaries"
}

Input options

Parameter	Type	Description
states	string[]	Filter by state codes (e.g., ["CA", "FL", "TX"]). Leave empty for all.
incidentTypes	string[]	Filter by disaster type (e.g., ["Hurricane", "Fire"]). Leave empty for all.
declarationTypes	string[]	Filter by declaration type: DR (Major Disaster), EM (Emergency), FM (Fire Management).
yearFrom	integer	Only disasters declared on or after this year.
yearTo	integer	Only disasters declared on or before this year.
maxRecords	integer	Maximum records to fetch. Default: 10,000. Full database: 69,000+.

Incident types available

Biological, Coastal Storm, Dam/Levee Break, Earthquake, Fire, Flood, Freezing, Hurricane, Mud/Landslide, Severe Ice Storm, Severe Storm, Snowstorm, Straight-Line Winds, Tornado, Tropical Storm, Typhoon, Volcanic Eruption, Winter Storm, Other.

Use cases

• Insurance companies - Assess disaster risk by county for underwriting and claims analysis
• Real estate firms - Evaluate property risk based on historical disaster patterns in an area
• Emergency management - Analyze disaster response patterns and resource allocation trends
• Climate researchers - Study long-term trends in disaster frequency and severity since 1953
• Data journalists - Report on disaster patterns, federal response times, and regional impacts
• Government contractors - Identify areas with active disaster recovery programs for FEMA contract opportunities
• Risk analysts - Build disaster probability models using 70+ years of historical data

Data freshness

FEMA updates this database daily. Schedule this Actor to run daily or weekly to track new disaster declarations as they happen.

Cost

This Actor uses the FEMA OpenFEMA API. Typical cost: less than $0.01 per run for up to 10,000 records.