FEMA Records
20
Above median
Indiana · FEMA + NOAA + National Risk Index
Vanderburgh County, IN
20 FEMA disaster declarations (1991-2026), with a FEMA National Risk Index rating of Relatively Moderate. Most common hazard: Severe Storm.
- 20
- FEMA declarations
- 16
- Major disasters
- 91
- NRI risk · Relatively Moderate
- Severe Storm
- Top hazard
The verdict
Two federal records point in the busier direction for Vanderburgh County. Its 20 FEMA declarations are 17% above the Indiana county mean and exceed the count for 46% of the 3,266 counties in this registry. Separately, FEMA's National Risk Index places it in the riskiest 9%, based on modeled expected annual loss, social vulnerability, and community resilience.
- Riskiest 9%
- of U.S. counties for FEMA National Risk Index score
- Relatively Moderate
- FEMA National Risk Index rating
- 20
- FEMA declarations vs 21 national county avg
- 821
- 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 18163 · Vanderburgh County 20 declarations · rank 1705/3,266
DECL-HEAVY · MAJOR-HEAVY · RANK-LOWER · PHOTO-FINISH · NRI-MID · ACT-HIGH · TYPE-LEAD · VS-ST-ABOVE
- DECL-HEAVY 20
- MAJOR-HEAVY 80%
- RANK-LOWER #1,705
- PHOTO-FINISH Monona
- NRI-MID 91
- ACT-HIGH High
- TYPE-LEAD Severe Storm
- VS-ST-ABOVE +17%
Nearest declaration peer: Monona, IA (0 declaration gap)
FEMA Disaster Declarations Summaries v2 filing stamps for this county register. Read with this county → · Indiana state profile
Vanderburgh County in the declaration-count neighbourhood
FEMA declaration records among Vanderburgh County and nearest peers by total count
- Los Angeles · largest
Los Angeles · largest
88 declarations
- Cleveland · near 20
Cleveland · near
20 declarations
- Monona · near 20
Monona · near
20 declarations
- Tallapoosa · near 20
Tallapoosa · near
20 declarations
- Vanderburgh · this county 20
Vanderburgh · this county
20 declarations
- Ujelang · smallest 1
Ujelang · smallest
1 declarations
What this shows Vanderburgh County carries 20 FEMA declaration records, ranked 1705 of 3,266 counties in this registry.
How Vanderburgh County's FEMA declaration count compares nationally
Vanderburgh County vs. all counties in this dataset
FEMA disaster declarations, all-time · Vanderburgh County
20 46th percentile higher than 46% 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
Vanderburgh County's FEMA Risk Index score
Which hazard drives modeled loss here?
FEMA's modeled annual dollar loss for Vanderburgh County is led by Riverine Flooding (about $35.9M Expected Annual Loss, Historical Loss Ratio Relatively Low), while Earthquake carries the highest National Risk Index rating (Relatively Moderate). 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 Vanderburgh County's hazard record show?
Reading the federal records together
FEMA's NFIP table contains a substantial paid-claim history for this county: 821 claims and $7.5M in payments. PlainHazard labels 500 or more claims a heavy registry record; that is a reporting bucket, not an official FEMA risk grade. The average paid claim was $9.1K. NFIP totals exclude uninsured flood losses and do not measure how many properties currently carry a policy.
The declaration register points in the busier direction. Vanderburgh County's 20 federal records stand 17% above the Indiana county mean of 17.1. 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.
FEMA National Risk Index
This county sits among the highest-risk counties nationally on FEMA's National Risk Index, a composite score of 91.3/100 (Relatively Moderate). Expected Annual Loss is rated Relatively Moderate (roughly $96.4M in annualized losses). Social vulnerability reads Relatively Moderate and community resilience Very High, both critical modifiers of realized harm here. Among the 18 modeled hazards, Earthquake carries the county's highest rating, a mid-range Relatively Moderate. FEMA's modeled frequency puts that hazard at roughly once every 158 years here.
67 /100
Historical Activity Index
High historical activity
Vanderburgh County, IN · 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
14/30
20 OpenFEMA declarations, full ingest window (1.0x national county average)
County Disaster Density High
15/25
20 declarations (1.2x state county average of 17)
Major Disaster Share Very High
20/25
16 of 20 declarations are major disasters (80%)
Hazard Diversity Very High
18/20
7 different disaster types declared in Vanderburgh County
FEMA NRI 8-hazard radar - Vanderburgh 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
80%
Mostly major
NRI risk score
91
Relatively Moderate
Source: FEMA National Risk Index Per-county per-hazard ratings, December 2025 release
How often does each hazard strike Vanderburgh 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Earthquake | Relatively Moderate | roughly once every 158 years |
| Tornado | Relatively High | roughly once every 6 years |
| Strong Wind | Relatively High | an average of 4.2 times per year |
| Winter Weather | Relatively High | an average of 8.2 times per year |
| Heat Wave | Relatively Moderate | 8.4 modeled event-days per year |
| Ice Storm | Relatively High | an average of 1.2 times per year |
| Riverine Flooding | Relatively Moderate | an average of 4.3 times per year |
| Cold Wave | Relatively Moderate | an average of 1.1 times per year |
| Hail | Relatively Moderate | an average of 3 times per year |
| Lightning | Relatively Moderate | an average of 52 times per year |
| Drought | Relatively Low | 5.1 modeled event-days per year |
| Hurricane | Very Low | roughly once every 101 years |
| Wildfire | Very Low | roughly once every 4,647 years |
| Landslide | Very Low | roughly once every 5 years |
Source: FEMA National Risk Index Modeled annualized frequency; drought and heat wave use event-days/year, December 2025 release
Disaster Types
Severe Storm 11
Flood 3
Biological 2
Winter Storm 1
Tornado 1
Hurricane 1
Snowstorm 1
What Severe Storm declarations mean here
Severe Storm is the most frequent declaration type on Vanderburgh County's record, 55% 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 - 16 80.0%
of all 20 declarations
Emergency - 4 20.0%
of all 20 declarations
FEMA Declarations Timeline
| Year | Declarations | |
|---|---|---|
| 2026 | 1 | |
| 2025 | 1 | |
| 2020 | 2 | |
| 2018 | 1 | |
| 2014 | 1 | |
| 2011 | 1 | |
| 2009 | 1 | |
| 2008 | 1 | |
| 2007 | 1 | |
| 2006 | 1 | |
| 2005 | 3 | |
| 2004 | 1 | |
| 2003 | 1 | |
| 2002 | 1 | |
| 1997 | 1 | |
Show 2 earlier declaration years
| 1996 | 1 | |
| 1991 | 1 | |
Disaster Declarations
How the 20 FEMA declarations break into federal action codes (DR / EM / FM). Same DISTINCT grain as the table below.
Download these 20 declarations as CSV . FEMA source data is public domain; our derived presentation is CC0.
| DR# | Title | Type | Incident | Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3641 | SEVERE WINTER STORM | EM | Winter Storm | 2026-01-24 |
| 4882 | SEVERE STORMS, STRAIGHT-LINE WINDS, TORNADOES, AND FLOODING | DR | Flood | 2025-07-22 |
| 4515 | COVID-19 PANDEMIC | DR | Biological | 2020-04-03 |
| 3456 | COVID-19 | EM | Biological | 2020-03-13 |
| 4363 | SEVERE STORMS AND FLOODING | DR | Flood | 2018-05-04 |
| 4173 | SEVERE WINTER STORM AND SNOWSTORM | DR | Severe Storm | 2014-04-22 |
| 1997 | SEVERE STORMS, TORNADOES, STRAIGHT-LINE WINDS, AND | DR | Severe Storm | 2011-06-23 |
| 1828 | SEVERE WINTER STORM | DR | Severe Storm | 2009-03-05 |
| 1795 | SEVERE STORMS AND FLOODING | DR | Severe Storm | 2008-09-23 |
| 1662 | SEVERE STORMS AND FLOODING | DR | Severe Storm | 2006-10-06 |
| 1612 | TORNADO AND SEVERE STORMS | DR | Tornado | 2005-11-08 |
| 3238 | HURRICANE KATRINA EVACUATION | EM | Hurricane | 2005-09-10 |
| 1573 | SEVERE WINTER STORMS AND FLOODING | DR | Severe Storm | 2005-01-21 |
| 3197 | SNOW | EM | Snowstorm | 2005-01-11 |
| 1520 | SEVERE STORMS, TORNADOES, AND FLOODING | DR | Severe Storm | 2004-06-03 |
| 1476 | SEVERE STORMS, TORNADOES, AND FLOODING | DR | Severe Storm | 2003-07-11 |
| 1433 | SEVERE STORMS AND TORNADOES | DR | Severe Storm | 2002-09-25 |
| 1165 | SEVERE STORMS AND FLOODING | DR | Severe Storm | 1997-03-06 |
| 1125 | SEVERE STORMS AND FLOODING | DR | Severe Storm | 1996-07-03 |
| 891 | SEVERE STORMS & FLOODING | DR | Flood | 1991-01-05 |
Storm Events in Indiana
Statewide NOAA context only. PlainHazard does not currently attribute these state totals to Vanderburgh County.
| Storm Type | Events | Fatalities | Injuries | Property Damage |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Thunderstorm Wind | 4,886 | 16 | 73 | $57.6M |
| Hail | 1,643 | 0 | 0 | $1.7M |
| Winter Weather | 1,166 | 32 | 80 | $2.5M |
| Flood | 850 | 13 | 3 | $16.0M |
| Flash Flood | 648 | 14 | 5 | $97.9M |
Source: NOAA Storm Events Database State-level aggregated data, 2015-2025
NFIP Flood Insurance Claims
Total Claims
821
Total Paid
$7.5M
Avg Per Claim
$9.1K
Source: FEMA National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) OpenFEMA Claims Data
FEMA National Risk Index
Overall Risk
Relatively Moderate
Score: 91.3/100
Expected Annual Loss
Relatively Moderate
$96.4M/year
Social Vulnerability
Relatively Moderate
Community Resilience
Very High
Hazard Risk Breakdown
Earthquake Relatively Moderate
Tornado Relatively High
Strong Wind Relatively High
Winter Weather Relatively High
Heat Wave Relatively Moderate
Ice Storm Relatively High
Riverine Flooding Relatively Moderate
Cold Wave Relatively Moderate
Hail Relatively Moderate
Lightning Relatively Moderate
Drought Relatively Low
Hurricane Very Low
Wildfire Very Low
Landslide 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: Earthquake
Earthquake is the model's clearest example of a hazard with no season and no warning. Its expected loss is driven less by how often shaking occurs than by how much of the building stock predates modern seismic codes, so exposure can be high in places where nothing has happened for a long time.
Worth noting for Vanderburgh County: the model and the federal record do NOT point at the same hazard. Earthquake 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
Vanderburgh County's closest FEMA peer: Brown County, MN
Comparisons use published FEMA declaration fields plus the National Risk Index composite for Vanderburgh County. Record similarity, not a safety rating.
Closest declaration profiles
Vanderburgh County shows 20 FEMA declarations, led by Severe Storm.
Similar Major-disaster share
Vanderburgh County: 16 of 20 of its declarations are Major.
Similar modeled NRI score
Vanderburgh County: NRI composite 91.3 (Relatively Moderate).
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 Vanderburgh County - capture-dated entries only.
Compare beyond this state
Nationwide peers by NRI score & FEMA declaration volume
Two PlainHazard-derived comparison paths for Vanderburgh 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: 91.3 (Relatively Moderate).
Similar declaration volume
Nearest out-of-state counties by FEMA declaration count. This county: 20. NRI peers are excluded so the two link sets stay distinct.
Further reading for this county
Understanding disaster data
Vanderburgh County's NFIP claims file (821 claims) and FEMA declaration history measure different federal records - this guide separates them from modeled NRI risk.
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 Vanderburgh County?
The most common disaster type in Vanderburgh County is Severe Storm, with 11 declarations. Other disaster types include Flood (3), Biological (2), Winter Storm (1).
How does Vanderburgh County's FEMA declaration record compare with the Indiana average?
FEMA lists 20 declaration records for Vanderburgh County. That is 17% above the Indiana county mean of 17.1. Its count is also 3% below 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 Vanderburgh County received?
Vanderburgh County has received 16 major disaster declarations, representing 80% of all 20 disaster declarations.
How many flood insurance claims has Vanderburgh County filed?
Vanderburgh County has 821 National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) claims totaling $7.5M in payments, with an average of $9.1K per claim.
Does FEMA's top risk-rated hazard match the highest Expected Annual Loss in Vanderburgh County?
No. In Vanderburgh County, Earthquake has the highest National Risk Index rating (Relatively Moderate), while Riverine Flooding leads Expected Annual Loss at about $35.9M. FEMA's risk score and dollar-loss model use different inputs, so the leaders often differ.
What was the worst year for disasters in Vanderburgh County?
The most active year for disaster declarations in Vanderburgh County was 2005, with 3 declarations. The county has FEMA disaster data spanning 1991 to 2026.
What is the FEMA National Risk Index score for Vanderburgh County?
According to the FEMA National Risk Index, Vanderburgh County, Indiana has an overall risk score of 91.3 out of 100 (Relatively Moderate). On social vulnerability the county rates Relatively Moderate; on community resilience, Very High. The Expected Annual Loss (EAL) score is Relatively Moderate, representing $96.4M in annualized losses.
Which natural hazard poses the greatest risk to Vanderburgh County?
FEMA's NRI data points to Vanderburgh County as of the latest release is Earthquake (risk rating: Relatively Moderate). Other significant hazards include Tornado (Relatively High) and Strong Wind (Relatively High). FEMA's modeled event frequency puts earthquake here at roughly once every 158 years. The underlying methodology weighs historical event frequency against exposed assets and community vulnerability.
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 Vanderburgh County · vintage 2026-08-25 · Methodology · Indiana profile · Verify with FEMA OpenFEMA · Verify with NOAA Storm Events