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Kansas · FEMA + NOAA + National Risk Index

Lane County, KS

11 FEMA disaster declarations (1993-2022), with a FEMA National Risk Index rating of Very Low. Most common hazard: Severe Storm.

11
FEMA declarations
8
Major disasters
2
NRI risk · Very Low
Severe Storm
Top hazard

The verdict

Lane County has a nationally busy FEMA history: 11 declarations, more than 12% of counties in this registry. But the state comparison tempers that reading: the total is 39% below the Kansas county mean. FEMA's separate National Risk Index places the county safer than 2%; that score models loss and vulnerability rather than counting declarations.

Safer than 2%
of U.S. counties for FEMA National Risk Index score
Very Low
FEMA National Risk Index rating
11
FEMA declarations vs 21 national county avg
5
severe storm declarations, the most common hazard here

FEMA's National Risk Index and its declaration registry are separate measures. This county's registry includes Major Disaster (DR) and Emergency (EM) records; an EM authorizes a narrower set of federal assistance than a DR.

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FEMA OpenFEMA declaration desk

County FIPS 20101 · Lane County 11 declarations · rank 2829/3,266

DECL-MID · MAJOR-MID · RANK-LOWER · PHOTO-FINISH · NRI-LOW · ACT-HIGH · TYPE-LEAD · VS-ST-BELOW

  • DECL-MID 11
  • MAJOR-MID 73%
  • RANK-LOWER #2,829
  • PHOTO-FINISH Meeker
  • NRI-LOW Very Low
  • ACT-HIGH High
  • TYPE-LEAD Severe Storm
  • VS-ST-BELOW -39%

Nearest declaration peer: Meeker, MN (0 declaration gap)

FEMA Disaster Declarations Summaries v2 filing stamps for this county register. Read with this county → · Kansas state profile

Lane County among counties with fewer federal records

FEMA declaration records among Lane County and nearest peers by total count

declarations

What this shows Lane County carries 11 FEMA declaration records, ranked 2829 of 3,266 counties in this registry.

Source FEMA OpenFEMA Disaster Declarations Summaries v2 As of 2026-08-25

Lane County versus quieter counties in this dataset

Lane County among lower-declaration counties nationally

FEMA disaster declarations, all-time · Lane County

11 12th percentile higher than 12% of 3,266 counties

This county 0 90 all U.S. counties FEMA tracks, bucketed by value

Each bar is a band; taller bars hold more counties. The dashed line + filled bar mark this entry. Hover or tap any bar for its full count, share, and where it sits relative to this entry.

Source FEMA Disaster Declarations Summaries v2 · 2026-08-25

Lane County's FEMA Risk Index score

0/100100/100Kansas avg30/1002.3/100
FEMA National Risk Index composite score vs. the Kansas county average

What does Lane County's hazard record show?

FEMA National Risk Index

This county sits at the very bottom of FEMA's National Risk Index nationally, a composite score of 2.3/100 (rated Very Low). Projected losses are minimal, Expected Annual Loss reads Very Low (roughly $3.1M in annualized losses), and the county's exposure is shaped by a Very Low social-vulnerability profile and Relatively Moderate community resilience. Among the 18 modeled hazards, Drought carries the county's highest rating, a mid-range Relatively Moderate. FEMA's modeled frequency puts that hazard at 73 modeled event-days per year here, based on 1,841 historical events on record.

Reading the federal records together

No paid-claim row for this county appears in the NFIP county table used by PlainHazard. That absence is not evidence that flooding never occurred: the register observes claims under federal flood-insurance policies, not uninsured losses, emergency reports, or every flood outside the program. The FEMA declaration history below is therefore the available federal-action record on this page.

Start with the state benchmark: a Kansas county averages 18.0 federal declaration records, while Lane County has 11. The gap is 39% below that mean. Fewer entries indicate a quieter history of recorded federal actions, not immunity from a hazard and not a prediction about what happens next.

47 /100

Historical Activity Index

Moderate historical activity

Lane County, KS · PlainHazard-derived composite from federal records

This 0–100 index is an explicit PlainHazard composite from FEMA declaration history only on the county surface (this DB has no county-level NOAA damage row) . It is not FEMA's National Risk Index, not a forecast, and not a safety, insurance, or preparedness rating. Open the calculator · Methodology

FEMA Declarations (1953–present) Moderate
8/30

11 OpenFEMA declarations, full ingest window (0.5x national county average)

County Disaster Density Moderate
8/25

11 declarations (0.6x state county average of 18)

Major Disaster Share High
18/25

8 of 11 declarations are major disasters (73%)

Hazard Diversity High
13/20

5 different disaster types declared in Lane County

FEMA NRI 8-hazard radar - Lane County

Lane County NRI risk profile 8-axis FEMA National Risk Index radar showing per-hazard scores for Earthquake 8, Flood 8, Hurricane 0, Tornado 8, Wildfire 8, Drought 48, Heat Wave 8, Winter Storm 25. The simple mean of these eight displayed scores is 14 of 100. Earthquake Flood Hurricane Tornado Wildfire Drought Heat Wave Winter Storm 14 8-hazard mean
Lane County NRI risk profile FIPS 20101 · displayed-hazard mean 14/100
How to read this radar

Each axis: NRI risk rating (Very Low-Very High) on a 0-100 scale. Rounder = broad exposure; spiky = one or two hazards dominate.

FEMA Records

11

Low volume

Major Disaster share

73%

Major-heavy

NRI risk score

2

Very Low

Source: FEMA National Risk Index Per-county per-hazard ratings, December 2025 release

How often does each hazard strike Lane County?

FEMA's National Risk Index models a historical event count and an annualized frequency for each hazard type. Most hazards are expressed as modeled occurrences per year; FEMA expresses drought and heat-wave frequency as event-days per year. These modeled frequencies are not forecasts.

Hazard NRI Risk Rating Recurrence
Drought Relatively Moderate 73 modeled event-days per year
Hail Relatively Low an average of 9.9 times per year
Wildfire Very Low roughly once every 2,493 years
Winter Weather Relatively Low an average of 12 times per year
Tornado Very Low roughly once every 1 years
Cold Wave Very Low an average of 3.7 times per year
Strong Wind Very Low an average of 4.8 times per year
Ice Storm Very Low roughly once every 2 years
Earthquake Very Low roughly once every 2,217 years
Heat Wave Very Low 0.9 modeled event-days per year
Lightning Very Low an average of 44 times per year
Landslide Very Low roughly once every 10 years
Riverine Flooding Very Low roughly once every 4 years

Source: FEMA National Risk Index Modeled annualized frequency; drought and heat wave use event-days/year, December 2025 release

Disaster Types

Severe Storm 5
Snowstorm 2
Biological 2
Hurricane 1
Flood 1

What Severe Storm declarations mean here

Severe Storm is the most frequent declaration type on Lane County's record, 45% of its declarations. In FEMA's vocabulary this covers convective weather: thunderstorm straight-line winds, large hail, and the multi-day outbreaks that often carry embedded tornadoes. Activity is heaviest in spring and summer, though the season varies by region.

These events behave differently from a hurricane on paper. Damage tends to be distributed along a storm track rather than concentrated on a coastline, and a declaration typically follows an outbreak that crossed several counties over a few days, not a single point of impact. Because the qualifying threshold is the cost of uninsured public and individual losses rather than storm intensity, two similar storms can produce a declaration in one year and none in another.

Declaration counts describe past federal action. They are a record of what was declared, not a forecast of future hazard probability.

Declaration Types

What DR / EM / FM mean

FEMA categorizes declarations as Major Disasters (DR), Emergencies (EM), or Fire Management Assistance (FM).

Major Disaster - 8 72.7%

of all 11 declarations

Emergency - 3 27.3%

of all 11 declarations

FEMA Declarations Timeline

Year Declarations
2022 2
2020 2
2017 1
2014 1
2008 2
2007 1
2005 1
1993 1

Disaster Declarations

How the 11 FEMA declarations break into federal action codes (DR / EM / FM). Same DISTINCT grain as the table below.

Download these 11 declarations as CSV . FEMA source data is public domain; our derived presentation is CC0.

DR# Title Type Incident Date
4654 SEVERE WINTER STORMS AND STRAIGHT-LINE WINDS DR Snowstorm 2022-05-25
4640 SEVERE STORMS AND STRAIGHT LINE WINDS DR Severe Storm 2022-02-17
4504 COVID-19 PANDEMIC DR Biological 2020-03-29
3481 COVID-19 EM Biological 2020-03-13
4319 SEVERE WINTER STORM, SNOWSTORM, STRAIGHT-LINE WINDS, AND FLOODING DR Snowstorm 2017-06-16
4150 SEVERE STORMS, STRAIGHT-LINE WINDS, TORNADOES, AND FLOODING DR Severe Storm 2013-10-22
1776 SEVERE STORMS, FLOODING AND TORNADOES DR Severe Storm 2008-07-09
3282 SEVERE WINTER STORMS EM Severe Storm 2007-12-12
1675 SEVERE WINTER STORM DR Severe Storm 2007-01-07
3236 HURRICANE KATRINA EVACUATION EM Hurricane 2005-09-10
1000 SEVERE STORMS & FLOODING DR Flood 1993-07-22

Storm Events in Kansas

Statewide NOAA context only. PlainHazard does not currently attribute these state totals to Lane County.

Storm Type Events Fatalities Injuries Property Damage
Hail 8,265 0 9 $24.2M
Thunderstorm Wind 7,987 3 34 $30.6M
High Wind 1,553 1 7 $10.2M
Drought 1,272 0 0 $0
Flash Flood 1,037 6 9 $35.9M

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database State-level aggregated data, 2015-2025

FEMA National Risk Index

Overall Risk

Very Low

Score: 2.3/100

Expected Annual Loss

Very Low

$3.1M/year

Social Vulnerability

Very Low

Community Resilience

Relatively Moderate

Hazard Risk Breakdown

Drought Relatively Moderate
Hail Relatively Low
Wildfire Very Low
Winter Weather Relatively Low
Tornado Very Low
Cold Wave Very Low
Strong Wind Very Low
Ice Storm Very Low
Earthquake Very Low
Heat Wave Very Low
Lightning Very Low
Landslide Very Low
Riverine Flooding Very Low

Source: FEMA National Risk Index (NRI) Ratings reflect relative scores among all US counties. Data: hazards.fema.gov/nri

The model's sharpest exposure here: Drought

Drought is the slowest of the modeled hazards and the least visible: it does its damage to agriculture, water supply and soil over seasons rather than hours, so it rarely produces the kind of single-day damage that drives a disaster declaration. FEMA scores it in event-days per year rather than discrete events for exactly that reason.

Worth noting for Lane County: the model and the federal record do NOT point at the same hazard. Drought carries the highest modeled rating (Relatively Moderate), while the county's declaration history is led by Severe Storm. That is not a contradiction, the two measure genuinely different things. Declarations record federal ACTION, which requires damage costly enough to exceed state and local capacity; the Risk Index models EXPECTED annual loss across all 18 hazards whether or not any declaration ever followed. A hazard can be the county's largest modeled exposure and never once have driven a declaration.

National Risk Index ratings are modeled estimates of expected annual loss, not predictions of what will happen in any given year.

Data-matched county comparisons

Lane County's closest FEMA peer: Waupaca County, WI

Comparisons use published FEMA declaration fields plus the National Risk Index composite for Lane County. Record similarity, not a safety rating.

How these peers are chosen

Cohort: Published U.S. county equivalents outside the source state or territory. Each metric keeps six ETL candidates; three unique destinations are shown after de-duplicating across axes. Declaration-volume ranking combines count and Major-disaster share and prefers a different leading incident type; Major-share ranks the Major fraction adjusted for volume; NRI ranks the modeled composite score only.

Retained FEMA snapshot feed for Lane County - capture-dated entries only.

Compare beyond this state

Nationwide peers by NRI score & FEMA declaration volume

Two PlainHazard-derived comparison paths for Lane County: nearest out-of-state National Risk Index composite and nearest FEMA declaration count (floor ≥5 records). Record similarity only, not a forecast of the next hazard.

Further reading for this county

Most disaster-prone counties

With 11 FEMA declarations, Lane County sits in the high-volume declaration band - see how that count ranks against other U.S. counties.

More PlainHazard guides

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the most common disaster type in Lane County?
The most common disaster type in Lane County is Severe Storm, with 5 declarations. Other disaster types include Snowstorm (2), Biological (2), Hurricane (1).
How does Lane County's FEMA declaration record compare with the Kansas average?
The typical Kansas county has 18.0 FEMA declaration records; Lane County has 11, or 39% fewer. Against the national county mean of 20.7, this county's total is 47% lower. The comparison is historical and says nothing about the probability of a future event.
How many major FEMA disaster declarations has Lane County received?
Lane County has received 8 major disaster declarations, representing 73% of all 11 disaster declarations.
What was the worst year for disasters in Lane County?
The most active year for disaster declarations in Lane County was 2008, with 2 declarations. The county has FEMA disaster data spanning 1993 to 2022.
What is the FEMA National Risk Index score for Lane County?
According to the FEMA National Risk Index, Lane County, Kansas has an overall risk score of 2.3 out of 100 (Very Low). Social vulnerability here rates Very Low, while community resilience comes in at Relatively Moderate. The Expected Annual Loss (EAL) score is Very Low, representing $3.1M in annualized losses.
Which natural hazard poses the greatest risk to Lane County?
FEMA's NRI data points to Lane County as of the latest release is Drought (risk rating: Relatively Moderate). Other significant hazards include Hail (Relatively Low) and Wildfire (Very Low). FEMA's modeled event frequency puts drought here at 73 modeled event-days per year, drawn from 1,841 historical events on record. FEMA derives these ratings from historical event frequency, the assets exposed, and the community's vulnerability profile.
Data Sources & Methodology

Disaster declaration data comes from the FEMA OpenFEMA Disaster Declarations Summaries v2 API, which includes all federally declared disasters, emergencies, and fire management assistance grants.

Storm event data is sourced from the NOAA Storm Events Database (2015-2025), which tracks significant weather events including thunderstorms, tornadoes, floods, and winter storms.

This data is provided for informational purposes only. FEMA disaster declarations represent federal response actions and may not capture all local emergencies or weather events.

FEMA OpenFEMA declarations + NRI for Lane County · vintage 2026-08-25 · Methodology · Kansas profile · Verify with FEMA OpenFEMA · Verify with NOAA Storm Events