Browse Archives

About These Browse Archives

Browse archives are an alphabetical scan of the PlainHazard dataset. They exist for two reasons. First, they give visitors who already know the name of the state or county they are looking for a quick way to scroll directly to it without using the site search. Second, they expose the full breadth of the dataset in a flat, predictable shape, useful for visitors comparing geographic coverage across hazard portals, for accessibility tools that prefer simple lists over rich landing pages, and for the small minority of human readers who genuinely want an alphabetical index rather than a ranked one.

These archive pages are intentionally noindex. Search engines have no use for thin, repetitive alphabet pages, and surfacing them in search would dilute the authority of the real landing pages, the rankings, the state pages, the county pages, and the research pages. The archives are linked from this hub and reachable via direct URL, which is sufficient for the navigation aid they provide. They are deliberately excluded from the XML sitemap as well.

Where to Find Substantive Hazard Content

For substantive landing pages and analysis, visit:

• All states - state-level rollups with disaster timelines, top counties, hazard-type distribution, and FEMA National Risk Index scores.
• All counties - county-level detail with full declaration history, NFIP flood insurance footprint, NRI hazard ratings, and state/national comparisons.
• Rankings, most disasters - ranked lists by total declarations, major declarations, NRI risk score, and per-hazard exposure.
• Research - original analysis on FEMA declaration trends, hazard-type concentration, and county-level risk concentration.
• Methodology - how PlainHazard processes FEMA OpenFEMA, FEMA NRI, and NOAA NCEI storm events.

Why an Alphabetical Browse Helps Some Visitors

Ranked landing pages, the rankings, the state and county pages, answer questions about magnitude. They surface the most-exposed places, the highest-risk hazards, the longest disaster histories. They are the right entry point for visitors asking research-shaped questions. But for a visitor who already knows the place they care about, their own county, the county they are considering relocating to, the county where a family member lives, the fastest path is not a ranked list but a direct lookup. The alphabetical browse provides that lookup. Click the letter the place starts with, scan the resulting list, click through to the detail page. It is a deliberate, low-noise alternative to ranked discovery.

Data Sources Behind the Archives

The states and counties listed in these archives are populated from the same primary datasets as the rest of PlainHazard. State and county geographies come from the U.S. Census Bureau reference files. Disaster history comes from FEMA's OpenFEMA API. Hazard risk ratings come from the FEMA National Risk Index. The archives are regenerated on every build, so newly-declared disasters and updated NRI vintages flow through to the alphabetical lists automatically. There is no separate curation step, every place that exists in the underlying dataset is reachable from these archives.

Accessibility Considerations for Alphabetical Lists

Alphabetical browses serve readers using screen readers, keyboard navigation, and other assistive technology better than dense ranked landing pages in some scenarios. Screen-reader users can navigate through a flat list of place names without needing to interpret rank numerals, comparison percentages, or chart imagery. Keyboard-only users can tab through the letter index and then through the matching state or county names in predictable, linear order. The archives are deliberately styled with high contrast text on neutral background, generous tap target sizing for touch users, and semantic nav elements with descriptive aria labels so that orientation cues are exposed to the accessibility tree. Where the rest of PlainHazard relies on charts, sortable tables, and ranked rosters for its analytic value, this hub deliberately strips back to plain links to maximize the chance that any visitor, regardless of input modality, can find the specific place they need.

Update Cadence

The browse archives refresh on every PlainHazard rebuild. When FEMA publishes new disaster declarations, when the National Risk Index releases a new annual vintage, or when the Census Bureau publishes updated geographic reference files, the archives automatically include any new states or counties on the next build. Removed or merged counties, rare, but they do happen when county equivalents reorganize in independent cities or Alaska boroughs, are handled by the underlying geography lookup; once a county is dropped from the source data it stops appearing in the archives the next build after.