FEMA Records
27
High volume
Virginia · FEMA + NOAA + National Risk Index
Pittsylvania County, VA
27 FEMA disaster declarations (1972-2026), with a FEMA National Risk Index rating of Relatively Low. Most common hazard: Severe Storm.
- 27
- FEMA declarations
- 18
- Major disasters
- 64
- NRI risk · Relatively Low
- Severe Storm
- Top hazard
The verdict
Two federal records point in the busier direction for Pittsylvania County. Its 27 FEMA declarations are 32% above the Virginia county mean and exceed the count for 78% of the 3,266 counties in this registry. Separately, FEMA's National Risk Index places it in the riskiest 36%, based on modeled expected annual loss, social vulnerability, and community resilience.
- Riskiest 36%
- of U.S. counties for FEMA National Risk Index score
- Relatively Low
- FEMA National Risk Index rating
- 27
- FEMA declarations vs 21 national county avg
- 26
- 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 51143 · Pittsylvania County 27 declarations · rank 631/3,266
DECL-HEAVY · MAJOR-MID · RANK-MID · PHOTO-FINISH · NRI-LOW · ACT-HIGH · TYPE-LEAD · VS-ST-ABOVE
- DECL-HEAVY 27
- MAJOR-MID 67%
- RANK-MID #631
- PHOTO-FINISH Greene
- NRI-LOW 64
- ACT-HIGH High
- TYPE-LEAD Severe Storm
- VS-ST-ABOVE +32%
Nearest declaration peer: Greene, MO (0 declaration gap)
FEMA Disaster Declarations Summaries v2 filing stamps for this county register. Read with this county → · Virginia state profile
Pittsylvania County among high-volume declaration counties
FEMA declaration records among Pittsylvania County and nearest peers by total count
- Los Angeles · largest
Los Angeles · largest
88 declarations
- Coal · near 27
Coal · near
27 declarations
- Greene · near 27
Greene · near
27 declarations
- Pittsylvania · this county 27
Pittsylvania · this county
27 declarations
- Warren · near 27
Warren · near
27 declarations
- Ujelang · smallest 1
Ujelang · smallest
1 declarations
What this shows Pittsylvania County carries 27 FEMA declaration records, ranked 631 of 3,266 counties in this registry.
Where Pittsylvania County ranks in the national declaration registry
Pittsylvania County vs. high-volume counties in this registry
FEMA disaster declarations, all-time · Pittsylvania County
27 Top 22% higher than 78% 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
Pittsylvania County's FEMA Risk Index score
Which hazard drives modeled loss here?
FEMA's modeled annual dollar loss for Pittsylvania County is led by Riverine Flooding (about $12.3M Expected Annual Loss, Historical Loss Ratio Relatively High), while Hurricane 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 Pittsylvania County's hazard record show?
FEMA National Risk Index
This county carries a high composite score on FEMA's National Risk Index, 63.8/100, rated Relatively Low. Its Expected Annual Loss rating is Relatively Low (roughly $16.5M in annualized losses), and a Very High social-vulnerability profile combined with Relatively Low community resilience shapes how much of that raw exposure becomes realized harm. Even the county's top-rated hazard, Hurricane, 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 13 years here, based on 26 historical events on record.
Reading the federal records together
This county has a small entry in FEMA's NFIP paid-claims table: 26 claims and $430.7K 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.
The declaration register points in the busier direction. Pittsylvania County's 27 federal records stand 32% above the Virginia county mean of 20.4. That comparison describes how often federal action was recorded, including any Major Disaster, Emergency, and Fire Management entries shown on this page; it does not convert the count into future probability.
74 /100
Historical Activity Index
High historical activity
Pittsylvania County, VA · 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) High
20/30
27 OpenFEMA declarations, full ingest window (1.3x national county average)
County Disaster Density High
17/25
27 declarations (1.3x state county average of 20)
Major Disaster Share High
17/25
18 of 27 declarations are major disasters (67%)
Hazard Diversity Very High
20/20
9 different disaster types declared in Pittsylvania County
FEMA NRI 8-hazard radar - Pittsylvania 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
67%
Major-heavy
NRI risk score
64
Relatively Low
Source: FEMA National Risk Index Per-county per-hazard ratings, December 2025 release
How often does each hazard strike Pittsylvania 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Hurricane | Relatively Low | roughly once every 13 years |
| Riverine Flooding | Relatively Moderate | an average of 2.3 times per year |
| Drought | Relatively Moderate | 9.8 modeled event-days per year |
| Landslide | Relatively Low | an average of 1.2 times per year |
| Winter Weather | Relatively Moderate | an average of 6.8 times per year |
| Earthquake | Relatively Low | roughly once every 752 years |
| Ice Storm | Relatively Moderate | an average of 1.8 times per year |
| Lightning | Relatively Moderate | an average of 44 times per year |
| Hail | Relatively Low | an average of 4.3 times per year |
| Heat Wave | Relatively Low | 2.2 modeled event-days per year |
| Wildfire | Very Low | roughly once every 3,481 years |
| Strong Wind | Relatively Low | an average of 3 times per year |
| Tornado | Relatively Low | roughly once every 4 years |
| Cold Wave | Relatively Low | roughly once every 1 years |
| Avalanche | Very Low | roughly once every 100 years |
Source: FEMA National Risk Index Modeled annualized frequency; drought and heat wave use event-days/year, December 2025 release
Disaster Types
Severe Storm 7
Hurricane 7
Snowstorm 3
Tropical Storm 2
Biological 2
Flood 2
Drought 2
Winter Storm 1
Severe Ice Storm 1
What Severe Storm declarations mean here
Severe Storm is the most frequent declaration type on Pittsylvania County's record, 26% 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 - 18 66.7%
of all 27 declarations
Emergency - 9 33.3%
of all 27 declarations
FEMA Declarations Timeline
| Year | Declarations | |
|---|---|---|
| 2026 | 1 | |
| 2025 | 2 | |
| 2024 | 1 | |
| 2021 | 1 | |
| 2020 | 2 | |
| 2019 | 2 | |
| 2018 | 1 | |
| 2013 | 1 | |
| 2012 | 1 | |
| 2005 | 1 | |
| 2003 | 2 | |
| 2002 | 1 | |
| 2000 | 1 | |
| 1996 | 2 | |
| 1995 | 1 | |
Show 5 earlier declaration years
| 1994 | 2 | |
| 1993 | 1 | |
| 1992 | 1 | |
| 1977 | 2 | |
| 1972 | 1 | |
Disaster Declarations
How the 27 FEMA declarations break into federal action codes (DR / EM / FM). Same DISTINCT grain as the table below.
Download these 27 declarations as CSV . FEMA source data is public domain; our derived presentation is CC0.
| DR# | Title | Type | Incident | Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3631 | SEVERE WINTER STORM | EM | Winter Storm | 2026-01-23 |
| 4863 | SEVERE WINTER STORMS AND FLOODING | DR | Severe Storm | 2025-04-04 |
| 4831 | TROPICAL STORM HELENE | DR | Tropical Storm | 2024-10-01 |
| 3621 | POST-TROPICAL CYCLONE HELENE | EM | Tropical Storm | 2024-09-29 |
| 4602 | SEVERE WINTER STORMS | DR | Severe Ice Storm | 2021-05-10 |
| 4512 | COVID-19 PANDEMIC | DR | Biological | 2020-04-02 |
| 3448 | COVID-19 | EM | Biological | 2020-03-13 |
| 4411 | TROPICAL STORM MICHAEL | DR | Hurricane | 2018-12-18 |
| 4401 | HURRICANE FLORENCE | DR | Hurricane | 2018-10-15 |
| 3403 | HURRICANE FLORENCE | EM | Hurricane | 2018-09-11 |
| 3359 | HURRICANE SANDY | EM | Hurricane | 2012-10-29 |
| 4072 | SEVERE STORMS AND STRAIGHT-LINE WINDS | DR | Severe Storm | 2012-07-27 |
| 3240 | HURRICANE KATRINA EVACUATION | EM | Hurricane | 2005-09-12 |
| 1491 | HURRICANE ISABEL | DR | Hurricane | 2003-09-18 |
| 1458 | SEVERE WINTER STORM, RECORD/NEAR RECORD SNOWFALL, HEAVY RAIN,FLOODIND, AND MUDSLIDE | DR | Severe Storm | 2003-03-27 |
| 1411 | SEVERE STORMS, TORNADOES, AND FLOODING | DR | Severe Storm | 2002-05-05 |
| 1318 | SEVERE WINTER STORMS | DR | Severe Storm | 2000-02-28 |
| 1135 | HURRICANE FRAN AND ASSOCIATED SEVERE STORM COND | DR | Hurricane | 1996-09-06 |
| 1086 | BLIZZARD OF 96 (SEVERE SNOW STORM) | DR | Snowstorm | 1996-01-13 |
| 1059 | SEVERE STORMS AND FLOODING | DR | Severe Storm | 1995-07-01 |
Show 7 earlier declaration records
| DR# | Title | Type | Incident | Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1021 | SEVERE WINTER ICE STORM | DR | Severe Storm | 1994-04-11 |
| 1014 | SEVERE ICE STORMS, FLOODING | DR | Snowstorm | 1994-03-10 |
| 3112 | SEVERE WINTER STORM | EM | Snowstorm | 1993-03-25 |
| 944 | SEVERE STORMS & FLOODING | DR | Flood | 1992-05-19 |
| 3046 | DROUGHT | EM | Drought | 1977-07-23 |
| 3018 | DROUGHT | EM | Drought | 1976-10-15 |
| 339 | TROPICAL STORM AGNES | DR | Flood | 1972-06-23 |
Storm Events in Virginia
Statewide NOAA context only. PlainHazard does not currently attribute these state totals to Pittsylvania County.
| Storm Type | Events | Fatalities | Injuries | Property Damage |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Thunderstorm Wind | 8,940 | 13 | 31 | $123.1M |
| Flood | 2,300 | 4 | 0 | $85.1M |
| Winter Weather | 2,049 | 6 | 32 | $902.0K |
| Flash Flood | 1,942 | 13 | 4 | $244.2M |
| Heavy Rain | 1,566 | 0 | 0 | $2.5M |
Source: NOAA Storm Events Database State-level aggregated data, 2015-2025
NFIP Flood Insurance Claims
Total Claims
26
Total Paid
$430.7K
Avg Per Claim
$16.6K
Source: FEMA National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) OpenFEMA Claims Data
FEMA National Risk Index
Overall Risk
Relatively Low
Score: 63.8/100
Expected Annual Loss
Relatively Low
$16.5M/year
Social Vulnerability
Very High
Community Resilience
Relatively Low
Hazard Risk Breakdown
Hurricane Relatively Low
Riverine Flooding Relatively Moderate
Drought Relatively Moderate
Landslide Relatively Low
Winter Weather Relatively Moderate
Earthquake Relatively Low
Ice Storm Relatively Moderate
Lightning Relatively Moderate
Hail Relatively Low
Heat Wave Relatively Low
Wildfire Very Low
Strong Wind Relatively Low
Tornado Relatively Low
Cold Wave Relatively Low
Avalanche 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: Hurricane
Hurricane exposure in the model bundles the three ways a tropical system does harm, which arrive on different timescales and are insured differently: wind, storm surge on the coast, and rainfall flooding that can reach far inland well after landfall.
Worth noting for Pittsylvania County: the model and the federal record do NOT point at the same hazard. Hurricane carries the highest modeled rating (Relatively Low), 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
Pittsylvania County's closest FEMA peer: Hinds County, MS
Comparisons use published FEMA declaration fields plus the National Risk Index composite for Pittsylvania County. Record similarity, not a safety rating.
Closest declaration profiles
Pittsylvania County shows 27 FEMA declarations, led by Severe Storm.
Similar Major-disaster share
Pittsylvania County: 18 of 27 of its declarations are Major.
Similar modeled NRI score
Pittsylvania County: NRI composite 63.8 (Relatively 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 Pittsylvania County - capture-dated entries only.
Compare beyond this state
Nationwide peers by NRI score & FEMA declaration volume
Two PlainHazard-derived comparison paths for Pittsylvania 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: 63.8 (Relatively Low).
Similar declaration volume
Nearest out-of-state counties by FEMA declaration count. This county: 27. NRI peers are excluded so the two link sets stay distinct.
Further reading for this county
Most disaster-prone counties
With 27 FEMA declarations, Pittsylvania 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 Pittsylvania County?
The most common disaster type in Pittsylvania County is Severe Storm, with 7 declarations. Other disaster types include Hurricane (7), Snowstorm (3), Tropical Storm (2).
How does Pittsylvania County's FEMA declaration record compare with the Virginia average?
FEMA lists 27 declaration records for Pittsylvania County. That is 32% above the Virginia county mean of 20.4. Its count is also 30% above the national county mean of 20.7. A larger declaration history records more federal actions; it is not a forecast of the county's next hazard.
How many major FEMA disaster declarations has Pittsylvania County received?
Pittsylvania County has received 18 major disaster declarations, representing 67% of all 27 disaster declarations.
How many flood insurance claims has Pittsylvania County filed?
Pittsylvania County has 26 National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) claims totaling $430.7K in payments, with an average of $16.6K per claim.
Does FEMA's top risk-rated hazard match the highest Expected Annual Loss in Pittsylvania County?
No. In Pittsylvania County, Hurricane has the highest National Risk Index rating (Relatively Low), while Riverine Flooding leads Expected Annual Loss at about $12.3M. FEMA's risk score and dollar-loss model use different inputs, so the leaders often differ.
What was the worst year for disasters in Pittsylvania County?
The most active year for disaster declarations in Pittsylvania County was 1977, with 2 declarations. The county has FEMA disaster data spanning 1972 to 2026.
What is the FEMA National Risk Index score for Pittsylvania County?
According to the FEMA National Risk Index, Pittsylvania County, Virginia has an overall risk score of 63.8 out of 100 (Relatively Low). The county's social vulnerability rating is Very High and community resilience is Relatively Low. The Expected Annual Loss (EAL) score is Relatively Low, representing $16.5M in annualized losses.
Which natural hazard poses the greatest risk to Pittsylvania County?
FEMA's NRI data points to Pittsylvania County is Hurricane (risk rating: Relatively Low). Other significant hazards include Riverine Flooding (Relatively Moderate) and Drought (Relatively Moderate). FEMA's modeled event frequency puts hurricane here at roughly once every 13 years, drawn from 26 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.
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 Pittsylvania County · vintage 2026-08-25 · Methodology · Virginia profile · Verify with FEMA OpenFEMA · Verify with NOAA Storm Events