How the disaster declaration figures are made

The sources

These pages read FEMA’s OpenFEMA declarations dataset, as retrieved on November 4, 2026, with the Census Bureau’s list of counties for their names. FEMA last refreshed its declarations on November 2, 2026.

• OpenFEMA Disaster Declarations Summaries, v2, Federal Emergency Management Agency, OpenFEMA
• Census Bureau county population estimates, U.S. Census Bureau

What a declaration is

A declaration is a federal decision to send aid, made on a state’s, territory’s or tribe’s request. It is counted once, by FEMA’s disaster number, however many counties it names. It is not a measure of how severe an event was: a county with no declaration may have had the same storm as one with several, and a request that was never made is in no file.

FEMA declares three kinds. A major disaster opens the widest aid. An emergency is a smaller grant, to protect lives and property ahead of or during an event. A fire management assistance declaration is a grant for the cost of fighting one fire. Every count on these pages names its kind. FEMA’s declarations page is the authority for any one of them.

How a county is counted

A county is a five-digit FIPS code, from FEMA’s state and county codes on each designated area. A county named twice by one declaration, as FEMA sometimes lists one county under two designated areas, is counted once for it. A designated area with no county code, such as a statewide designation, counts for its state and for no county. A tribal government’s declaration is filed under its state’s code, as FEMA files it, and is counted in that state.

Each county is named by the Census Bureau’s list of counties where that list has its code, and by FEMA’s own name for the area where it does not, as for the territories and for Connecticut’s former counties.

The COVID-19 declarations

FEMA’s COVID-19 declarations of 2020 and 2021 are filed under the incident type Biological. They are counted as FEMA counts them, because they are declarations, and wherever a count of major disasters is printed by year, by state or by county, the count without them is beside it, so neither reading is hidden.

People

No household’s record is read. OpenFEMA’s files of individual registrations, claims and properties are not loaded, and these pages print declaration counts only.

The check against an independent value

The first question for every figure here is what independently produced value it is checked against. Today there is none. The source checks what it loads against the count of records FEMA’s API reports for the dataset, which is the same system’s second output and not an independent one, and the hub’s tests recompute each figure from FEMA’s records by code that shares only those files with the queries. FEMA’s declarations page is the authority for any one declaration.

The license, and FEMA as the source

The datasets are works of the U.S. Government, and data.gov’s catalog entry gives its license as U.S. Government works. OpenFEMA’s terms set the conditions of access, and ask every user to state:

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).

Every page names FEMA as the publisher in text. None carries a FEMA or Department of Homeland Security logo or seal, or claims to be official. Sums, ranks and shares are this site’s, computed from FEMA’s data, and each links the query that made it.

What this data cannot show

• A declaration is a federal decision to send aid, made on a state’s or tribe’s request; it is not a measure of how severe an event was, and a request never made is in no file.
• This cut counts declarations only. The aid FEMA reports for each, and the requests it turned down, come with their own files; insurance payments, SBA loans and other agencies’ aid are not here.

Sources

• OpenFEMA Disaster Declarations Summaries, v2 — Federal Emergency Management Agency, OpenFEMA · U.S. Government work; OpenFEMA’s terms and conditions of access, its statement printed verbatim. · Updated: Refreshed by FEMA every 20 minutes