FEMA Disaster Scraper

Export official U.S. disaster declarations, affected areas, incident dates, and assistance-program flags from OpenFEMA.

What you get

Collect current or historical FEMA declaration records as clean Apify dataset rows. Filter by state or territory, incident type, declaration type, and declaration date. Results include the disaster number, designated area, incident window, FEMA region, FIPS codes, and whether individual assistance, public assistance, or hazard mitigation programs were designated.

Output fields

Field	Description
id, fema_declaration, disaster_number	OpenFEMA and declaration identifiers
state, designated_area, region	Affected geography
declaration_type, declaration_date, fiscal_year	Declaration metadata
incident_type, title	Incident classification and official title
incident_begin_date, incident_end_date	Incident window
individual_assistance, public_assistance, hazard_mitigation	Program flags
place_code, fips_state_code, fips_county_code	Geographic codes
last_refresh, source_url, source	Freshness and attribution

Example output

{"fema_declaration":"DR-4890-TX","state":"TX","incident_type":"Flood","designated_area":"Example County","public_assistance":true}

Input parameters

Parameter	Required	Description
states	No	State or territory codes such as TX, CA, FL, or PR
incidentTypes	No	FEMA labels such as Flood, Hurricane, or Fire
declarationTypes	No	Codes such as DR, EM, or FM
fromDate	No	Earliest declaration date
toDate	No	Latest declaration date
maxResults	No	Maximum records; defaults to 10

Use cases

• Emergency-management teams can monitor new declarations by state.
• Insurers can enrich catastrophe-response and exposure workflows.
• Researchers can build historical disaster and assistance datasets.
• Local organizations can track programs designated for their area.

Limitations

This Actor reports declaration summaries, not live warnings, forecasts, damage estimates, grant awards, or individual eligibility. FEMA controls classifications, refresh timing, corrections, and geographic coverage. One disaster can produce many rows because declarations are recorded by designated area. Always follow official FEMA guidance for emergency decisions.

Compared to alternatives

The Actor turns OpenFEMA's OData filtering into a small Apify input form, then emits automation-ready rows with official disaster links. It is more focused than broad government-data tools and easier to schedule than hand-building encoded $filter, $top, and $skip requests.

FAQ

Does this contain every U.S. disaster?

It contains FEMA declaration summaries available in the official dataset, which reaches back to 1953. Undeclared events are outside its scope.

Can I monitor one state?

Yes. Save a Task with one state code and a recent fromDate, then schedule it.

Explore FEMA Disaster Scraper on thirdwatch.dev. Related Actors: Google News Scraper, GDELT News Scraper, and Google Search Scraper.

Last verified: 2026-07