FEMA Records
10
Low volume
Minnesota · FEMA + NOAA + National Risk Index
Mille Lacs County, MN
10 FEMA disaster declarations (1965-2023), with a FEMA National Risk Index rating of Very Low. Most common hazard: Flood.
- 10
- FEMA declarations
- 7
- Major disasters
- 28
- NRI risk · Very Low
- Flood
- Top hazard
The verdict
Mille Lacs County has a nationally busy FEMA history: 10 declarations, more than 10% of counties in this registry. But the state comparison tempers that reading: the total is 44% below the Minnesota county mean. FEMA's separate National Risk Index places the county safer than 28%; that score models loss and vulnerability rather than counting declarations.
- Safer than 28%
- of U.S. counties for FEMA National Risk Index score
- Very Low
- FEMA National Risk Index rating
- 10
- FEMA declarations vs 21 national county avg
- 24
- NFIP flood insurance claims filed
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.
FEMA OpenFEMA declaration desk
County FIPS 27095 · Mille Lacs County 10 declarations · rank 2913/3,266
DECL-MID · MAJOR-MID · RANK-LOWER · PHOTO-FINISH · NRI-LOW · ACT-HIGH · TYPE-LEAD · VS-ST-BELOW
- DECL-MID 10
- MAJOR-MID 70%
- RANK-LOWER #2,913
- PHOTO-FINISH Cheyenne
- NRI-LOW Very Low
- ACT-HIGH High
- TYPE-LEAD Flood
- VS-ST-BELOW -44%
Nearest declaration peer: Cheyenne, NE (0 declaration gap)
FEMA Disaster Declarations Summaries v2 filing stamps for this county register. Read with this county → · Minnesota state profile
Mille Lacs County among counties with fewer federal records
FEMA declaration records among Mille Lacs County and nearest peers by total count
- Los Angeles · largest
Los Angeles · largest
88 declarations
- Cheyenne · near 10
Cheyenne · near
10 declarations
- Clinton · near 10
Clinton · near
10 declarations
- Golden Valley · near 10
Golden Valley · near
10 declarations
- Mille Lacs · this county 10
Mille Lacs · this county
10 declarations
- Ujelang · smallest 1
Ujelang · smallest
1 declarations
What this shows Mille Lacs County carries 10 FEMA declaration records, ranked 2913 of 3,266 counties in this registry.
Mille Lacs County versus quieter counties in this dataset
Mille Lacs County among lower-declaration counties nationally
FEMA disaster declarations, all-time · Mille Lacs County
10 10th percentile higher than 10% of 3,266 counties
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
Mille Lacs County's FEMA Risk Index score
Which hazard drives modeled loss here?
FEMA's modeled annual dollar loss for Mille Lacs County is led by Riverine Flooding (about $7.1M Expected Annual Loss, Historical Loss Ratio Relatively High), while Wildfire carries the highest National Risk Index rating (Relatively Low). EAL and risk score use different inputs; they need not agree.
Source: FEMA National Risk Index (December 2025 release) - Expected Annual Loss vs composite risk rating by hazard.
What does Mille Lacs County's hazard record show?
FEMA National Risk Index
This county's FEMA National Risk Index composite lands at 28.5/100 (Very Low), a modest reading against the rest of the country. Expected Annual Loss is rated Very Low (roughly $11.3M in annualized losses), tempered or compounded by a Very Low social-vulnerability score and Very High community-resilience score. Even the county's top-rated hazard, Wildfire, only reaches Relatively Low on FEMA's scale, none of the 18 modeled hazards stand out here. FEMA's modeled frequency puts that hazard at roughly once every 960 years here.
Reading the federal records together
This county has a small entry in FEMA's NFIP paid-claims table: 24 claims and $118.9K paid in total. PlainHazard calls 1-49 claims a light registry record, a label for this dataset rather than a finding that flood exposure is low. A short claims history can also reflect insurance take-up, the period covered, or losses that were never insured.
Start with the state benchmark: a Minnesota county averages 17.7 federal declaration records, while Mille Lacs County has 10. The gap is 44% 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.
45 /100
Historical Activity Index
Moderate historical activity
Mille Lacs County, MN · 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) Low
7/30
10 OpenFEMA declarations, full ingest window (0.5x national county average)
County Disaster Density Moderate
7/25
10 declarations (0.6x state county average of 18)
Major Disaster Share High
18/25
7 of 10 declarations are major disasters (70%)
Hazard Diversity High
13/20
5 different disaster types declared in Mille Lacs County
FEMA NRI 8-hazard radar - Mille Lacs County
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.
Major Disaster share
70%
Major-heavy
NRI risk score
28
Very Low
Source: FEMA National Risk Index Per-county per-hazard ratings, December 2025 release
How often does each hazard strike Mille Lacs 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Wildfire | Relatively Low | roughly once every 960 years |
| Cold Wave | Relatively Low | an average of 12 times per year |
| Hail | Relatively Low | an average of 4.5 times per year |
| Riverine Flooding | Relatively Low | roughly once every 2 years |
| Strong Wind | Relatively Low | an average of 2.9 times per year |
| Lightning | Relatively Low | an average of 33 times per year |
| Drought | Relatively Low | 8.8 modeled event-days per year |
| Landslide | Very Low | roughly once every 14 years |
| Tornado | Relatively Low | roughly once every 4 years |
| Heat Wave | Very Low | 1.9 modeled event-days per year |
| Ice Storm | Relatively Low | roughly once every 3 years |
| Winter Weather | Relatively Low | an average of 17 times per year |
| Earthquake | Very Low | roughly once every 7,463 years |
Source: FEMA National Risk Index Modeled annualized frequency; drought and heat wave use event-days/year, December 2025 release
Disaster Types
Flood 5
Biological 2
Severe Storm 1
Hurricane 1
Drought 1
What Flood declarations mean here
Flood is the most frequent declaration type on Mille Lacs County's record, 50% of its declarations. Federal flood declarations cover two mechanisms that behave very differently: riverine flooding, which builds over days as a watershed drains and is usually forecast well in advance, and flash flooding, which can arrive in under an hour from rainfall that fell somewhere upstream.
Flood is also the one hazard class where a second federal dataset exists for the same events. The National Flood Insurance Program records what was actually paid on insured losses, so it measures a narrower thing than the declaration count: uninsured damage, and flooding outside mapped special flood hazard areas, never enters it. Reading the two together is more informative than either alone.
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 - 7 70.0%
of all 10 declarations
Emergency - 3 30.0%
of all 10 declarations
FEMA Declarations Timeline
| Year | Declarations | |
|---|---|---|
| 2023 | 1 | |
| 2020 | 2 | |
| 2011 | 1 | |
| 2005 | 1 | |
| 2001 | 1 | |
| 1976 | 1 | |
| 1972 | 1 | |
| 1969 | 1 | |
| 1965 | 1 | |
Disaster Declarations
How the 10 FEMA declarations break into federal action codes (DR / EM / FM). Same DISTINCT grain as the table below.
Download these 10 declarations as CSV . FEMA source data is public domain; our derived presentation is CC0.
| DR# | Title | Type | Incident | Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4722 | SEVERE STORMS AND FLOODING | DR | Flood | 2023-07-19 |
| 4531 | COVID-19 PANDEMIC | DR | Biological | 2020-04-07 |
| 3453 | COVID-19 | EM | Biological | 2020-03-13 |
| 4009 | SEVERE STORMS, FLOODING, AND TORNADOES | DR | Severe Storm | 2011-07-28 |
| 3242 | HURRICANE KATRINA EVACUATION | EM | Hurricane | 2005-09-13 |
| 1370 | SEVERE WINTER STORMS, FLOODING, AND TORNADOES | DR | Flood | 2001-05-16 |
| 3013 | DROUGHT | EM | Drought | 1976-06-17 |
| 347 | SEVERE STORMS & FLOODING | DR | Flood | 1972-08-01 |
| 255 | FLOODING | DR | Flood | 1969-04-18 |
| 188 | FLOODING | DR | Flood | 1965-04-11 |
Storm Events in Minnesota
Statewide NOAA context only. PlainHazard does not currently attribute these state totals to Mille Lacs County.
| Storm Type | Events | Fatalities | Injuries | Property Damage |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Thunderstorm Wind | 4,420 | 13 | 25 | $68.2M |
| Hail | 4,203 | 0 | 0 | $34.5M |
| Extreme Cold/Wind Chill | 1,789 | 7 | 4 | $55.0K |
| Winter Storm | 1,695 | 2 | 17 | $10.0M |
| Heavy Snow | 1,190 | 9 | 14 | $1.0M |
Source: NOAA Storm Events Database State-level aggregated data, 2015-2025
NFIP Flood Insurance Claims
Total Claims
24
Total Paid
$118.9K
Avg Per Claim
$5.0K
Source: FEMA National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) OpenFEMA Claims Data
FEMA National Risk Index
Overall Risk
Very Low
Score: 28.5/100
Expected Annual Loss
Very Low
$11.3M/year
Social Vulnerability
Very Low
Community Resilience
Very High
Hazard Risk Breakdown
Wildfire Relatively Low
Cold Wave Relatively Low
Hail Relatively Low
Riverine Flooding Relatively Low
Strong Wind Relatively Low
Lightning Relatively Low
Drought Relatively Low
Landslide Very Low
Tornado Relatively Low
Heat Wave Very Low
Ice Storm Relatively Low
Winter Weather Relatively Low
Earthquake 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: Wildfire
Wildfire risk in the model reflects fuel, terrain, weather and how much development sits in the wildland-urban interface. It is one of the few hazards where the exposure is materially changed by land management and building choices, not only by where the county happens to be.
Worth noting for Mille Lacs County: the model and the federal record do NOT point at the same hazard. Wildfire carries the highest modeled rating (Relatively Low), while the county's declaration history is led by Flood. 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
Mille Lacs County's closest FEMA peer: Denali Borough, AK
Comparisons use published FEMA declaration fields plus the National Risk Index composite for Mille Lacs County. Record similarity, not a safety rating.
Closest declaration profiles
Mille Lacs County shows 10 FEMA declarations, led by Flood.
Similar Major-disaster share
Mille Lacs County: 7 of 10 of its declarations are Major.
Similar modeled NRI score
Mille Lacs County: NRI composite 28.5 (Very Low).
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 Mille Lacs County - capture-dated entries only.
Compare beyond this state
Nationwide peers by NRI score & FEMA declaration volume
Two PlainHazard-derived comparison paths for Mille Lacs 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.
Similar NRI composite
Nearest out-of-state counties by FEMA NRI score. This county: 28.5 (Very Low).
Similar declaration volume
Nearest out-of-state counties by FEMA declaration count. This county: 10. NRI peers are excluded so the two link sets stay distinct.
Further reading for this county
Most disaster-prone counties
With 10 FEMA declarations, Mille Lacs County sits in the high-volume declaration band - see how that count ranks against other U.S. counties.
More PlainHazard guides
- Most disaster-prone counties - U.S. counties ranked by FEMA declaration totals.
- Understanding disaster data - declarations vs storm events vs NRI scores.
- Preparing for natural disasters - household checklist (not county-specific advice).
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the most common disaster type in Mille Lacs County?
The most common disaster type in Mille Lacs County is Flood, with 5 declarations. Other disaster types include Biological (2), Severe Storm (1), Hurricane (1).
How does Mille Lacs County's FEMA declaration record compare with the Minnesota average?
The typical Minnesota county has 17.7 FEMA declaration records; Mille Lacs County has 10, or 44% fewer. Against the national county mean of 20.7, this county's total is 52% lower. The comparison is historical and says nothing about the probability of a future event.
How many major FEMA disaster declarations has Mille Lacs County received?
Mille Lacs County has received 7 major disaster declarations, representing 70% of all 10 disaster declarations.
How many flood insurance claims has Mille Lacs County filed?
Mille Lacs County has 24 National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) claims totaling $118.9K in payments, with an average of $5.0K per claim.
Does FEMA's top risk-rated hazard match the highest Expected Annual Loss in Mille Lacs County?
No. In Mille Lacs County, Wildfire has the highest National Risk Index rating (Relatively Low), while Riverine Flooding leads Expected Annual Loss at about $7.1M. FEMA's risk score and dollar-loss model use different inputs, so the leaders often differ.
What was the worst year for disasters in Mille Lacs County?
The most active year for disaster declarations in Mille Lacs County was 2020, with 2 declarations. The county has FEMA disaster data spanning 1965 to 2023.
What is the FEMA National Risk Index score for Mille Lacs County?
According to the FEMA National Risk Index, Mille Lacs County, Minnesota has an overall risk score of 28.5 out of 100 (Very Low). On social vulnerability the county rates Very Low; on community resilience, Very High. The Expected Annual Loss (EAL) score is Very Low, representing $11.3M in annualized losses.
Which natural hazard poses the greatest risk to Mille Lacs County?
Based on FEMA NRI data, the highest-risk natural hazard in Mille Lacs County as of the latest release is Wildfire (risk rating: Relatively Low). Other significant hazards include Cold Wave (Relatively Low) and Hail (Relatively Low). FEMA's modeled event frequency puts wildfire here at roughly once every 960 years. 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.
Flood insurance data comes from the FEMA National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) OpenFEMA claims dataset.
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 Mille Lacs County · vintage 2026-08-25 · Methodology · Minnesota profile · Verify with FEMA OpenFEMA · Verify with NOAA Storm Events