🌪️ FEMA Disaster Declarations Scraper

🚀 Collect federal disaster declarations from FEMA with incident types, program flags, affected areas, and FIPS codes. 60,000+ historical records dating back to 1953, delivered in under a minute.

🕒 Last updated: 2026-04-23

FEMA Disaster Declarations Scraper pulls structured disaster declaration records from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Each record includes the disaster number, declaration string, declaration type (Major Disaster, Emergency, Fire Management), incident type, declaration date, incident begin and end dates, affected areas, FIPS state and county codes, FEMA region number, and program activation flags for Individual Assistance, Public Assistance, and Hazard Mitigation. You can filter by state, incident type, and fiscal year.

Insurance analysts use this to model risk by analyzing historical disaster frequency and severity per region. Journalists investigate response patterns and declaration trends. Construction firms assess natural disaster exposure for project sites. Government agencies track program activations across regions and time periods. Researchers study climate impacts through decades of standardized federal disaster data.

Target	FEMA Disaster Declarations (1953 to present)
Use Cases	Insurance risk modeling, disaster pattern analysis, construction site assessment, emergency response research

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📋 What it does

• 📋 Declaration records. Disaster numbers, declaration strings, titles, and types for every federal disaster.
• 🌊 Incident details. Types (hurricane, flood, fire, tornado, earthquake), begin dates, and end dates.
• 🏛️ Program flags. Which FEMA programs were activated: Individual Assistance, Public Assistance, Hazard Mitigation.
• 📍 Geographic data. State codes, FIPS codes, county codes, designated areas, and FEMA regions.
• 🔍 Filtering. Narrow results by state, incident type, or fiscal year.

Each record captures a single disaster declaration with 25+ fields covering what happened, when, where, and which federal programs were activated in response.

💡 Why it matters: FEMA's website stores 60,000+ historical disaster declarations. Browsing and downloading them manually through the portal is slow. This actor delivers the full dataset in structured format, filtered to your needs, in seconds.

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🎬 Full Demo

🚧 Coming soon: a 3-minute walkthrough showing how to go from sign-up to a downloaded dataset.

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⚙️ Input

Input	Type	Default	Behavior
state	string	-	Filter by US state code (e.g. TX, CA, FL). Leave empty for all states.
incidentType	string	-	Filter by incident type: Fire, Flood, Hurricane, Tornado, Severe Storm, Earthquake, Winter Storm, Drought, and more.
fiscalYear	integer	-	Filter by fiscal year of declaration (e.g. 2024).
maxItems	integer	10	Maximum records to return. Free users are limited to 10. Paid users can set up to 1,000,000.

Example: hurricane declarations in Texas.

{
  "state": "TX",
  "incidentType": "Hurricane",
  "maxItems": 100
}

Example: all earthquake declarations nationwide.

{
  "incidentType": "Earthquake",
  "maxItems": 500
}

⚠️ Good to Know: FEMA's dataset goes back to 1953 and contains over 60,000 declarations. A full download of all historical records finishes in under a minute. Use filters to narrow results to specific states, incident types, or fiscal years.

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📊 Output

Each record contains 25+ fields. Download as CSV, Excel, JSON, or XML.

🧾 Schema

Field	Type	Example
📋 femaDeclarationString	string	"DR-4586-TX"
🔢 disasterNumber	integer	4586
🗺️ state	string	"TX"
📄 declarationType	string	"DR"
📅 declarationDate	string	"2024-05-15T00:00:00.000Z"
🌊 incidentType	string	"Hurricane"
📝 declarationTitle	string	"HURRICANE BERYL"
✅ ihProgramDeclared	boolean	true
✅ paProgramDeclared	boolean	true
✅ hmProgramDeclared	boolean	true
📅 incidentBeginDate	string	"2024-07-05T00:00:00.000Z"
📍 designatedArea	string	"Harris County"
🔢 fipsStateCode	string	"048"
🔢 fipsCountyCode	string	"201"
🌐 region	integer	6

📦 Sample records

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✨ Why choose this Actor

	Capability
📋	25+ fields per record. Declaration details, program flags, incident dates, and FIPS codes.
📅	70+ years of history. Declarations dating back to 1953 in a single dataset.
🔍	Three filter dimensions. State, incident type, and fiscal year.
🏛️	Program activation flags. Know which FEMA programs (IA, PA, HM) were activated.
📍	FIPS codes. State and county FIPS codes for GIS mapping and database joins.
⚡	Fast. 60,000+ records in under a minute.
📊	Structured output. Ready for spreadsheets, databases, or mapping applications.

FEMA has issued over 60,000 disaster declarations since 1953, covering hurricanes, floods, fires, tornadoes, earthquakes, and dozens of other incident types across all U.S. states and territories.

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📈 How it compares to alternatives

Approach	Cost	Coverage	Refresh	Setup
⭐ FEMA Disaster Scraper (this Actor)	$5 free credit, then pay-per-use	60,000+ records, 25+ fields	Live per run	⚡ 2 min
FEMA website portal	Free	Full, limited export tools	Manual	Slow navigation
Bulk data downloads	Free	Full, large files	Periodic	Technical setup
Third-party data providers	$300+/month	Varies	Monthly	Days

Pick this actor when you need filtered FEMA data without navigating the portal or processing bulk download files.

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🚀 How to use

1. 📝 Sign up. Create a free account with $5 credit (takes 2 minutes).
2. 🌐 Open the Actor. Go to the FEMA Disaster Declarations Scraper page on the Apify Store.
3. 🎯 Set input. Choose state, incident type, fiscal year, and max items.
4. 🚀 Run it. Click Start and let the Actor collect your data.
5. 📥 Download. Grab your results in the Dataset tab as CSV, Excel, JSON, or XML.

⏱️ Total time from signup to downloaded dataset: 3-5 minutes. No coding required.

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💼 Business use cases

🏦 Insurance and Risk Model natural disaster risk by state and county Analyze historical disaster frequency for underwriting Track which regions have the most program activations Build actuarial datasets from decades of declaration data	🏗️ Construction and Real Estate Assess natural disaster history for project sites Check FIPS county codes for prior declarations Evaluate flood, fire, and earthquake exposure by region Support environmental impact assessments with federal data
📰 Journalism and Advocacy Investigate disaster response patterns and timelines Compare declaration rates across states and incident types Track program activation trends over fiscal years Build data-driven stories about emergency management	🎓 Research and Policy Study climate change impacts through disaster frequency trends Analyze federal emergency response policy effectiveness Compare program activations across FEMA regions Build longitudinal datasets for peer-reviewed studies

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🌟 Beyond business use cases

Data like this powers more than commercial workflows. The same structured records support research, education, civic projects, and personal initiatives.

🎓 Research and academia Empirical datasets for papers, thesis work, and coursework Longitudinal studies tracking changes across snapshots Reproducible research with cited, versioned data pulls Classroom exercises on data analysis and ethical scraping	🎨 Personal and creative Side projects, portfolio demos, and indie app launches Data visualizations, dashboards, and infographics Content research for bloggers, YouTubers, and podcasters Hobbyist collections and personal trackers
🤝 Non-profit and civic Transparency reporting and accountability projects Advocacy campaigns backed by public-interest data Community-run databases for local issues Investigative journalism on public records	🧪 Experimentation Prototype AI and machine-learning pipelines with real data Validate product-market hypotheses before engineering spend Train small domain-specific models on niche corpora Test dashboard concepts with live input

🤖 Ask an AI assistant about this scraper

Open a ready-to-send prompt about this ParseForge actor in the AI of your choice:

• 💬 ChatGPT
• 🧠 Claude
• 🔍 Perplexity
• 🅒 Copilot

💰 How much does it cost?

Apify gives you $5 in free monthly credits on the Apify Free plan, enough to test FEMA Disaster Declarations Scraper and pull a real sample dataset. For ongoing usage:

• Starter plan ($49/month) — Recommended for individuals running FEMA Disaster Declarations Scraper regularly. Includes higher concurrency and larger datasets.
• Scale plan ($499/month) — Recommended for teams running FEMA Disaster Declarations Scraper at production scale.

Pay-Per-Event pricing means you only pay for what you actually use. Failed runs are never charged. See the Pricing tab on this Actor's page for exact event prices.

💡 Tips for using FEMA Disaster Declarations Scraper

• Start with a small maxItems (3-10) to validate output format before running larger jobs.
• Use Apify Schedules to run FEMA Disaster Declarations Scraper on a recurring basis and keep your dataset fresh.
• Export via Integrations: Apify connects to Google Sheets, Airbyte, Make, Zapier, and direct webhooks — pipe your data anywhere.
• Monitor with webhooks: trigger downstream workflows the moment a run finishes.
• Re-run failed items: if any individual records error out, re-run with their inputs only. Failed events are not charged.

⚖️ Is it legal to use FEMA Disaster Declarations Scraper?

Yes. FEMA Disaster Declarations Scraper only collects publicly available data. Web scraping public data has been confirmed as legal by US courts (see hiQ Labs v. LinkedIn) and is widely used for research, market analysis, and business intelligence.

However, you are responsible for:

• Respecting the source website's Terms of Service.
• Complying with GDPR, CCPA, and other applicable data-protection laws when personal data is involved.
• Not republishing copyrighted content without permission.

If you have specific compliance concerns, consult your legal team. See the Apify legal docs for more.

❓ Frequently Asked Questions

🔌 Automating FEMA Disaster Scraper

Control the scraper programmatically for scheduled runs and pipeline integrations:

• 🟢 Node.js. Install the apify-client NPM package.
• 🐍 Python. Use the apify-client PyPI package.
• 📚 See the Apify API documentation for full details.

The Apify Schedules feature lets you trigger this Actor on any cron interval. Schedule weekly runs to monitor new disaster declarations as they are issued.

🔌 Integrate with any app

FEMA Disaster Scraper connects to any cloud service via Apify integrations:

• Make - Automate multi-step workflows
• Zapier - Connect with 5,000+ apps
• Slack - Get run notifications
• Airbyte - Pipe data into your warehouse
• GitHub - Trigger runs from commits
• Google Drive - Export datasets straight to Sheets

You can also use webhooks to trigger downstream actions when a run finishes.

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💡 Pro Tip: browse the complete ParseForge collection for more data scrapers and tools.

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🆘 Need Help? Open our contact form to request a new scraper, propose a custom data project, or report an issue.

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⚠️ Disclaimer: this Actor is an independent tool and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by FEMA, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, or any federal agency. All trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners. Only publicly available data is collected.