FEMA Records
11
Low volume
Texas · FEMA + NOAA + National Risk Index
Ward County, TX
11 FEMA disaster declarations (1998-2021), with a FEMA National Risk Index rating of Very Low. Most common hazard: Hurricane.
- 11
- FEMA declarations
- 5
- Major disasters
- 15
- NRI risk · Very Low
- Hurricane
- Top hazard
The verdict
Ward 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 47% below the Texas county mean. FEMA's separate National Risk Index places the county safer than 15%; that score models loss and vulnerability rather than counting declarations.
- Safer than 15%
- 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
- 3
- fire 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.
FEMA OpenFEMA declaration desk
County FIPS 48475 · Ward County 11 declarations · rank 2855/3,266
DECL-MID · MAJOR-LIGHT · RANK-LOWER · PHOTO-FINISH · NRI-LOW · ACT-HIGH · TYPE-LEAD · VS-ST-BELOW
- DECL-MID 11
- MAJOR-LIGHT 45%
- RANK-LOWER #2,855
- PHOTO-FINISH Meeker
- NRI-LOW Very Low
- ACT-HIGH High
- TYPE-LEAD Hurricane
- VS-ST-BELOW -47%
Nearest declaration peer: Meeker, MN (0 declaration gap)
FEMA Disaster Declarations Summaries v2 filing stamps for this county register. Read with this county → · Texas state profile
Ward County among counties with fewer federal records
FEMA declaration records among Ward County and nearest peers by total count
- Los Angeles · largest
Los Angeles · largest
88 declarations
- Davis · near 11
Davis · near
11 declarations
- Meeker · near 11
Meeker · near
11 declarations
- Ward · this county 11
Ward · this county
11 declarations
- Wasatch · near 11
Wasatch · near
11 declarations
- Ujelang · smallest 1
Ujelang · smallest
1 declarations
What this shows Ward County carries 11 FEMA declaration records, ranked 2855 of 3,266 counties in this registry.
Ward County versus quieter counties in this dataset
Ward County among lower-declaration counties nationally
FEMA disaster declarations, all-time · Ward County
11 12th percentile higher than 12% 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
Ward County's FEMA Risk Index score
Which hazard drives modeled loss here?
FEMA's modeled annual dollar loss for Ward County is led by Riverine Flooding (about $2.1M Expected Annual Loss, Historical Loss Ratio Relatively Moderate), 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 Ward County's hazard record show?
FEMA National Risk Index
This county's FEMA National Risk Index composite lands at 15.4/100 (Very Low), a modest reading against the rest of the country. Expected Annual Loss is rated Very Low (roughly $4.1M in annualized losses), tempered or compounded by a Very High social-vulnerability score and Very Low 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 681 years here.
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 Texas county averages 20.9 federal declaration records, while Ward County has 11. The gap is 47% 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.
39 /100
Historical Activity Index
Moderate historical activity
Ward County, TX · 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
7/25
11 declarations (0.5x state county average of 21)
Major Disaster Share Moderate
11/25
5 of 11 declarations are major disasters (45%)
Hazard Diversity High
13/20
5 different disaster types declared in Ward County
FEMA NRI 8-hazard radar - Ward 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
45%
Mixed major share
NRI risk score
15
Very Low
Source: FEMA National Risk Index Per-county per-hazard ratings, December 2025 release
How often does each hazard strike Ward 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 681 years |
| Hail | Relatively Low | an average of 2.6 times per year |
| Strong Wind | Relatively Moderate | roughly once every 1 years |
| Drought | Relatively Low | 74 modeled event-days per year |
| Winter Weather | Relatively Low | an average of 4.3 times per year |
| Heat Wave | Relatively Low | 5.5 modeled event-days per year |
| Lightning | Relatively Low | an average of 44 times per year |
| Ice Storm | Relatively Low | roughly once every 3 years |
| Riverine Flooding | Very Low | roughly once every 2 years |
| Tornado | Relatively Low | roughly once every 4 years |
| Earthquake | Very Low | roughly once every 2,257 years |
| Hurricane | Very Low | roughly once every 189 years |
| Cold Wave | Very Low | roughly once every 2 years |
| Landslide | Very Low | roughly once every 20 years |
Source: FEMA National Risk Index Modeled annualized frequency; drought and heat wave use event-days/year, December 2025 release
Disaster Types
Fire 3
Hurricane 3
Severe Ice Storm 2
Biological 2
Severe Storm 1
What Hurricane declarations mean here
Hurricane is the most frequent declaration type on Ward County's federal record, 27% of its declarations. Atlantic tropical systems run on a defined season, 1 June to 30 November, with most activity concentrated between August and October; Pacific and territorial basins run on their own calendars. A single named storm routinely produces one declaration number covering a long corridor of counties at once, well inland as well as on the coast, which is why an affected county's count can jump by several in one year without several separate events having occurred.
One practical distinction matters when reading these records: a tropical declaration usually bundles wind, storm surge and inland rainfall flooding under a single incident, but the insurance behind them is split. Wind damage falls to property insurers, while flood and surge damage is covered only under a separate National Flood Insurance Program policy. That is why a county can show heavy declaration activity and a comparatively small NFIP claims record, or the reverse.
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).
Emergency - 6 54.5%
of all 11 declarations
Major Disaster - 5 45.5%
of all 11 declarations
FEMA Declarations Timeline
| Year | Declarations | |
|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 2 | |
| 2020 | 2 | |
| 2008 | 1 | |
| 2006 | 1 | |
| 2005 | 3 | |
| 1999 | 1 | |
| 1998 | 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4586 | SEVERE WINTER STORMS | DR | Severe Ice Storm | 2021-02-19 |
| 3554 | SEVERE WINTER STORM | EM | Severe Ice Storm | 2021-02-14 |
| 4485 | COVID-19 PANDEMIC | DR | Biological | 2020-03-25 |
| 3458 | COVID-19 | EM | Biological | 2020-03-13 |
| 3284 | WILDFIRES | EM | Fire | 2008-03-14 |
| 1624 | EXTREME WILDFIRE THREAT | DR | Fire | 2006-01-11 |
| 1606 | HURRICANE RITA | DR | Hurricane | 2005-09-24 |
| 3261 | HURRICANE RITA | EM | Hurricane | 2005-09-21 |
| 3216 | HURRICANE KATRINA EVACUATION | EM | Hurricane | 2005-09-02 |
| 3142 | EXTREME FIRE HAZARDS | EM | Fire | 1999-09-01 |
| 1239 | TROPICAL STORM CHARLEY | DR | Severe Storm | 1998-08-26 |
Storm Events in Texas
Statewide NOAA context only. PlainHazard does not currently attribute these state totals to Ward County.
| Storm Type | Events | Fatalities | Injuries | Property Damage |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hail | 14,072 | 0 | 15 | $7.4B |
| Thunderstorm Wind | 10,293 | 41 | 141 | $369.9M |
| Drought | 7,032 | 0 | 0 | $86.0K |
| Flash Flood | 4,728 | 338 | 24 | $47.6B |
| Heat | 4,079 | 119 | 405 | $0 |
Source: NOAA Storm Events Database State-level aggregated data, 2015-2025
FEMA National Risk Index
Overall Risk
Very Low
Score: 15.4/100
Expected Annual Loss
Very Low
$4.1M/year
Social Vulnerability
Very High
Community Resilience
Very Low
Hazard Risk Breakdown
Wildfire Relatively Low
Hail Relatively Low
Strong Wind Relatively Moderate
Drought Relatively Low
Winter Weather Relatively Low
Heat Wave Relatively Low
Lightning Relatively Low
Ice Storm Relatively Low
Riverine Flooding Very Low
Tornado Relatively Low
Earthquake Very Low
Hurricane Very Low
Cold Wave 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: 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 Ward 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 Hurricane. 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
Ward County's closest FEMA peer: Boone County, IL
Comparisons use published FEMA declaration fields plus the National Risk Index composite for Ward County. Record similarity, not a safety rating.
Closest declaration profiles
Ward County shows 11 FEMA declarations, led by Hurricane.
Similar Major-disaster share
Ward County: 5 of 11 of its declarations are Major.
Similar modeled NRI score
Ward County: NRI composite 15.4 (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 Ward County - capture-dated entries only.
Compare beyond this state
Nationwide peers by NRI score & FEMA declaration volume
Two PlainHazard-derived comparison paths for Ward 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: 15.4 (Very Low).
Similar declaration volume
Nearest out-of-state counties by FEMA declaration count. This county: 11. NRI peers are excluded so the two link sets stay distinct.
Further reading for this county
Most disaster-prone counties
With 11 FEMA declarations, Ward 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 Ward County?
The most common disaster type in Ward County is Hurricane, with 3 declarations. Other disaster types include Fire (3), Severe Ice Storm (2), Biological (2).
How does Ward County's FEMA declaration record compare with the Texas average?
The typical Texas county has 20.9 FEMA declaration records; Ward County has 11, or 47% 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 Ward County received?
Ward County has received 5 major disaster declarations, representing 45% of all 11 disaster declarations.
Does FEMA's top risk-rated hazard match the highest Expected Annual Loss in Ward County?
No. In Ward County, Wildfire has the highest National Risk Index rating (Relatively Low), while Riverine Flooding leads Expected Annual Loss at about $2.1M. FEMA's risk score and dollar-loss model use different inputs, so the leaders often differ.
What was the worst year for disasters in Ward County?
The most active year for disaster declarations in Ward County was 2005, with 3 declarations. The county has FEMA disaster data spanning 1998 to 2021.
What is the FEMA National Risk Index score for Ward County?
According to the FEMA National Risk Index, Ward County, Texas has an overall risk score of 15.4 out of 100 (Very Low). Social vulnerability here rates Very High, while community resilience comes in at Very Low. The Expected Annual Loss (EAL) score is Very Low, representing $4.1M in annualized losses.
Which natural hazard poses the greatest risk to Ward County?
Based on FEMA NRI data, the highest-risk natural hazard in Ward County is Wildfire (risk rating: Relatively Low). Other significant hazards include Hail (Relatively Low) and Strong Wind (Relatively Moderate). FEMA's modeled event frequency puts wildfire here at roughly once every 681 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.
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 Ward County · vintage 2026-08-25 · Methodology · Texas profile · Verify with FEMA OpenFEMA · Verify with NOAA Storm Events