- Federal disaster declaration
- DR, EM and FM
- Incident type
- Individual Assistance (IA)
- Public Assistance (PA)
- Hazard Mitigation (HM)
- Designated area
- Aid is not damages
- History, not a forecast
- OpenFEMA
- Federal disaster declaration
- A formal decision by the U.S. president, at a governor's request, that an event is beyond state and local capacity and unlocks federal assistance. This site counts declarations — the official response threshold being crossed — not every storm or fire.
- DR, EM and FM
- DR = Major Disaster Declaration (the broadest, for events like hurricanes and major floods). EM = Emergency Declaration (a narrower, faster form). FM = Fire Management Assistance (for wildfires threatening destruction). Each carries different programs.
- Incident type
- FEMA's category for what caused the declaration — Hurricane, Flood, Severe Storm, Fire, Tornado, Winter Storm, Earthquake, Drought, and others. We group related types into hazard pages.
- Individual Assistance (IA)
- FEMA aid to households and individuals — grants for temporary housing and repairs, and other services. "IA declared" means this help was made available, not how much was paid.
- Public Assistance (PA)
- FEMA reimbursement to state, local and tribal governments (and some nonprofits) for debris removal, emergency response and rebuilding public infrastructure.
- Hazard Mitigation (HM)
- Funding to reduce future risk after a disaster — buyouts of flood-prone homes, stronger building standards, drainage projects. It is forward-looking, unlike IA and PA.
- Designated area
- A county (or equivalent) named in a declaration as eligible for assistance. One disaster usually covers many counties; on a county page, each row is one declaration that named that county.
- Aid is not damages
- Assistance figures are federal money obligated under specific programs. Total economic loss from an event is a separate, usually much larger figure, measured differently, and is not shown here.
- History, not a forecast
- A count of past declarations tells you what has happened in a place, not what will. For current threats, the authoritative sources are the National Weather Service and FEMA.
- OpenFEMA
- FEMA's open-data program, which publishes the Disaster Declarations Summaries dataset this site is built on — every declaration back to 1953.
More on sources on the About the Data page and the FAQ.