FEMA Disaster Declarations - Federal Disaster Aid, Funding & Housing Assistance Search

Search 69,000+ FEMA disaster declarations from 1953 to present. Filter by state, incident type (hurricane, flood, fire, tornado, severe storm), fiscal year, and keyword. Get disaster funding summaries — Individual Assistance, Public Assistance, and Hazard Mitigation grant totals — and housing assistance data by county and ZIP code including damage amounts, approved grants, and repair costs.

Data is sourced from the FEMA OpenFEMA public API. No API key required.

---

Output Fields

Disaster Declarations (disasters search type):

Field	Type	Description
disasterNumber	integer	FEMA disaster number
state	string	State code
incidentType	string	Incident type (Hurricane, Flood, Fire, Tornado, etc.)
declarationTitle	string	Official declaration title
declarationDate	string	Date the disaster was declared
fyDeclared	integer	Fiscal year of declaration

Disaster Funding Summaries (funding search type):

Additional fields include Individual Assistance totals, Public Assistance totals, and Hazard Mitigation grant amounts per disaster.

Housing Assistance (assistance search type):

Additional fields include county, ZIP code, total damage amounts, approved Individual Assistance grants, and repair cost data.

---

Use Cases

• Insurance and catastrophe risk modeling — Retrieve historical disaster declarations by state and incident type. Build frequency and severity datasets for actuarial models.
• Real estate and mortgage risk assessment — Identify counties and ZIP codes with repeated disaster declarations or significant housing assistance claims to assess climate exposure.
• Government contracting and emergency management — Track declared disasters to identify opportunities for federal contract work in disaster response and recovery.
• Nonprofit and grant writing — Document disaster history in a target region to support applications for disaster preparedness or resilience funding.
• Journalism and policy research — Analyze FEMA declaration trends over time, compare federal assistance levels across states, or track the growing frequency of specific disaster types.
• Supply chain and business continuity planning — Identify locations with high disaster frequency to inform facility siting, inventory positioning, or continuity planning.

---

How to Use

Select a search type and apply relevant filters. Use yearFrom and yearTo for a date range, or year for a single fiscal year.

Example input — all Texas disaster declarations:

{
  "searchType": "disasters",
  "state": "TX",
  "incidentType": "",
  "year": 0,
  "maxResults": 100
}

Example input — hurricane declarations since 2000:

{
  "searchType": "disasters",
  "state": "",
  "incidentType": "Hurricane",
  "yearFrom": 2000,
  "yearTo": 2024,
  "maxResults": 500
}

Example input — disaster funding summaries for Florida:

{
  "searchType": "funding",
  "state": "FL",
  "year": 0,
  "maxResults": 100
}

Example input — housing assistance data for Louisiana (post-Katrina era):

{
  "searchType": "assistance",
  "state": "LA",
  "yearFrom": 2005,
  "yearTo": 2010,
  "maxResults": 200
}

Example input — search by disaster name keyword:

{
  "searchType": "disasters",
  "keyword": "Hurricane Katrina",
  "maxResults": 50
}

Search Types

Value	Description
disasters	FEMA disaster declarations with incident type and declaration date
funding	Disaster funding summaries with IA, PA, and Hazard Mitigation totals
assistance	Housing assistance data by county and ZIP code

Common Incident Types

Hurricane, Flood, Fire, Tornado, Severe Storm, Severe Storm(s), Earthquake, Snow, Drought, Typhoon, Coastal Storm, Biological — or leave empty for all types.

---

Cost

Approximately $0.10 per run (platform start fee) plus minimal compute. Most runs complete in under 20 seconds.

---

Output Formats

Results are available as JSON, CSV, and Excel from the Apify dataset interface.

---

FAQ

Does this require an API key? No. The FEMA OpenFEMA API is public and requires no authentication.

How far back does disaster declaration data go? FEMA declarations go back to 1953, the year the Disaster Relief Act was first enacted.

What is the difference between Individual Assistance and Public Assistance? Individual Assistance (IA) provides grants directly to households for home repair, temporary housing, and other disaster needs. Public Assistance (PA) funds repair and rebuilding of public infrastructure like roads, schools, and utilities. Both are included in the funding search type.

What is Hazard Mitigation? The Hazard Mitigation Grant Program (HMGP) funds projects that reduce future disaster risk, such as elevating homes in flood zones or retrofitting buildings for earthquake resistance.

Can I get sub-state data like county or ZIP level? Yes. Use searchType: "assistance" to retrieve housing assistance data broken down by county and ZIP code for each disaster.

How is a "disaster number" assigned? FEMA assigns a sequential number to each presidentially declared major disaster. Numbers have been issued since declaration number 1 in 1953.