FEMA disaster declarations by designated area

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Every FEMA disaster declaration summary from OpenFEMA (DisasterDeclarationsSummaries v2, https://www.fema.gov/api/open/v2), one row per declaration x designated area. Each row carries the declaration type (DR major disaster, EM emergency, FM fire management, FP fire suppression), incident type, declaration and incident dates, fiscal year declared, which assistance programs were authorized (Individuals and Households, Individual Assistance, Public Assistance, Hazard Mitigation), state, county FIPS and FEMA region. Method: keyless GET with OData paging ($top=1000, deterministic $orderby=disasterNumber,designatedArea); volatile API-internal fields (id, hash, lastRefresh) are excluded so snapshots only change when the data changes. Units: none (categorical + dates); program flags are booleans. Caveats: ongoing incidents have null end/closeout dates until FEMA closes them; FEMA can amend historical records; declaration_title is free-text incident names. Coverage: U.S. states, territories and tribal nations, 1953 to present, per designated area. Provenance: FEMA OpenFEMA API - citation required, see license. Primary key: (fema_declaration_string, designated_area). Join keys: state_code, declaration_year. Cadence: refreshed daily; a new snapshot appears only when the data changes. Sample use: count declarations by state_code and declaration_year for disaster frequency trends; filter incident_type for hazard-specific series.

Source: Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)
Rows: 70,377
Columns: 21
Source cadence: Daily
Last refreshed: Sep 23, 2026
Theme: government

Column	Type	Description
fema_declaration_string	string	FEMA declaration identifier, e.g. 'DR-4671-CA' (type-number-state); with designated_area forms the primary key.
disaster_number	integer	Sequential disaster number assigned by FEMA.
state_code	string	Two-letter U.S. postal code of the state, territory or tribal nation.
declaration_type	string	Declaration type: DR (major disaster), EM (emergency), FM (fire management), FP (fire suppression).
declaration_date	string	Date the declaration was issued (ISO date).
fiscal_year_declared	integer	Federal fiscal year in which the declaration was issued.
incident_type	string	Type of incident, e.g. 'Hurricane', 'Fire', 'Severe Storm(s)'.
declaration_title	string	FEMA's free-text title for the declaration (incident name).
incident_begin_date	string	Start date of the incident period (ISO date; null when not reported).
incident_end_date	string	End date of the incident period (ISO date; null for ongoing incidents).
disaster_closeout_date	string	Date FEMA closed out the disaster (ISO date; null for open disasters).
designated_area	string	Designated area (county/parish/borough or tribal area) covered by this row; with fema_declaration_string forms the primary key.
fips_state_code	string	Two-digit FIPS state code of the designated area.
fips_county_code	string	Three-digit FIPS county code of the designated area.
region	integer	FEMA region number (1-10) responsible for the declaration.
ih_program	boolean	Whether the Individuals and Households program was declared for this area.
ia_program	boolean	Whether Individual Assistance was declared for this area.
pa_program	boolean	Whether Public Assistance was declared for this area.
hm_program	boolean	Whether the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program was declared for this area.
tribal_request	boolean	Whether the declaration was requested by a tribal nation.
declaration_year	integer	Calendar year of declaration_date (derived join key).

First 10 sample rows — a preview, not the complete dataset.

fema_declaration_string	disaster_number	state_code	declaration_type	declaration_date	fiscal_year_declared	incident_type	declaration_title	incident_begin_date	incident_end_date	disaster_closeout_date	designated_area	fips_state_code	fips_county_code	region	ih_program	ia_program	pa_program	hm_program	tribal_request	declaration_year
DR-1-GA	1	GA	DR	1953-05-02	1,953	Tornado	TORNADO	1953-05-02	1953-05-02	1954-06-01	Statewide	13	000	4	false	true	true	true	false	1,953
DR-100-MO	100	MO	DR	1960-04-20	1,960	Flood	FLOODS	1960-04-20	1960-04-20	1962-03-20	Statewide	29	000	7	false	true	true	true	false	1,960
DR-1000-KS	1,000	KS	DR	1993-07-22	1,993	Flood	SEVERE STORMS & FLOODING	1993-06-28	1993-10-05	2007-03-28	Atchison (County)	20	005	7	false	true	true	false	false	1,993
DR-1000-KS	1,000	KS	DR	1993-07-22	1,993	Flood	SEVERE STORMS & FLOODING	1993-06-28	1993-10-05	2007-03-28	Barton (County)	20	009	7	false	true	true	false	false	1,993
DR-1000-KS	1,000	KS	DR	1993-07-22	1,993	Flood	SEVERE STORMS & FLOODING	1993-06-28	1993-10-05	2007-03-28	Brown (County)	20	013	7	false	true	true	false	false	1,993
DR-1000-KS	1,000	KS	DR	1993-07-22	1,993	Flood	SEVERE STORMS & FLOODING	1993-06-28	1993-10-05	2007-03-28	Chase (County)	20	017	7	false	true	true	false	false	1,993
DR-1000-KS	1,000	KS	DR	1993-07-22	1,993	Flood	SEVERE STORMS & FLOODING	1993-06-28	1993-10-05	2007-03-28	Cherokee (County)	20	021	7	false	true	true	false	false	1,993
DR-1000-KS	1,000	KS	DR	1993-07-22	1,993	Flood	SEVERE STORMS & FLOODING	1993-06-28	1993-10-05	2007-03-28	Clay (County)	20	027	7	false	true	true	false	false	1,993
DR-1000-KS	1,000	KS	DR	1993-07-22	1,993	Flood	SEVERE STORMS & FLOODING	1993-06-28	1993-10-05	2007-03-28	Cloud (County)	20	029	7	false	true	true	false	false	1,993
DR-1000-KS	1,000	KS	DR	1993-07-22	1,993	Flood	SEVERE STORMS & FLOODING	1993-06-28	1993-10-05	2007-03-28	Crawford (County)	20	037	7	false	true	true	false	false	1,993

Point any LLM at the metadata endpoint — the documentation above is machine-readable too (JSON-LD + Croissant).

cURL

curl "https://datazimuts.com/v1/datasets/fema/fema_disaster_declarations" | jq '{title, rows, columns_count, license}'

Python

import requests

ds = requests.get("https://datazimuts.com/v1/datasets/fema/fema_disaster_declarations").json()
print(ds["title"], ds["rows"], "rows")

# Sample rows for an LLM context window
for row in ds.get("sample_rows", [])[:5]:
    print(row)

API endpoint: https://datazimuts.com/v1/datasets/fema/fema_disaster_declarations

Tip: fetch /llms.txt for the full machine-readable catalog.