PlainHazard

Original research, PlainHazard editorial

Top 10 FEMA Incident Types by Declaration Frequency

See which FEMA incident types appear most often in disaster declarations, ranked from the current declaration totals.

Research period:

Compiled by PlainHazard Editorial on 2026-08-03

Research question

Across the full OpenFEMA disaster declaration registry, which incident types, severe storms, hurricanes, fires, floods, biological events, account for the largest number of federal disaster declarations, and how broadly distributed are these incident types across US states?

Methodology

We ranked FEMA incident types by total declarations, along with the number of states affected and the years each type has been recorded, then took the top 10. Every number on this page reflects the current data; no figure is hardcoded, and the ranking updates whenever the underlying FEMA dataset is refreshed.

FEMA classifies every declaration by a single primary incident type, the hazard that triggered the federal response. Broad categories like "Severe Storm" and "Flood" dominate the count because they recur across many states and seasons and frequently combine (a severe storm system that produces both tornadoes and flooding is typically logged under one incident type). Rarer categories - "Earthquake", "Volcanic Eruption", "Tsunami" - appear far down the list not because they are mild, but because they strike infrequently and in a limited geography, so they generate few separate declarations.

Reading frequency alone can mislead: a category with many declarations is not necessarily the costliest or deadliest. A single hurricane or wildfire complex can cause more loss than years of routine severe-storm declarations. To weigh severity rather than count, pair this ranking with the per-state damage and fatality data and with the FEMA National Risk Index expected-annual-loss estimates. The state-count column also matters, an incident type spread across many states reflects a nationwide hazard, while one concentrated in a few states points to a regional risk.

See the methodology page for the source vintage and how the figures are derived.

Top 10 FEMA Incident Types by Declaration Frequency

Current data, updated as FEMA publishes new declarations

records
Source Federal Emergency Management Agency As of 2026-08-03

The ranked top 10

The 10 rows below reflect the current data and update automatically as FEMA publishes new declarations.

# Incident type Total declarations States affected Earliest year Latest year
1 Fire 1,755 44 1953 2026
2 Severe Storm 1,134 55 1956 2026
3 Flood 922 55 1953 2026
4 Hurricane 454 48 1954 2026
5 Tornado 182 33 1953 2024
6 Snowstorm 171 39 1965 2023
7 Biological 167 56 2020 2021
8 Severe Ice Storm 75 28 1968 2025
9 Typhoon 60 7 1963 2026
10 Drought 46 37 1964 2007

Source: Federal Emergency Management Agency, OpenFEMA Disaster Declarations Summaries V2 (incident type aggregates). Values reflect the current data on this site, refreshed as FEMA updates the underlying dataset.

Findings

Top entity in the ranking

The top-ranked incident type is Fire, with 1,755 total declarations. The full top-10 is shown in the table above; no number is hardcoded. When Federal Emergency Management Agency publishes a revision, the ranking and the surrounding text update to match.

Distribution shape

The gap between the top-ranked record (1,755) and the 10th-ranked record (46) characterizes how concentrated the top of the distribution is. Where the top value is many multiples of the median value of the visible set, the population is highly concentrated, a small number of entities accumulate the bulk of the measured quantity. Where the top and bottom of the visible set are close together, the distribution is relatively flat across the top end. The full distribution beyond this top-10 cut is summarized in the aggregate context section below and explored in the linked entity profiles.

Aggregate context

Across the full population behind this ranking, here are the summary statistics: how many records exist in total, the sum of the ranking metric across all qualifying records, and the mean per-record value. The methodology page documents the exact filter applied (records with null or zero values on the ranking metric are excluded). This aggregate row is computed from the same dataset that powers the ranking above.

Source provenance

The records in this ranking come from the Federal Emergency Management Agency's OpenFEMA Disaster Declarations Summaries V2 (incident type aggregates). PlainHazard keeps this page in sync with the source data, so there is no stale static export sitting behind the numbers, a new FEMA release propagates to this page within hours. The methodology page documents the source URL, the vintage date, and how the figures are derived.

Why this ranking matters

Rankings like this one let a reader scan a population quickly and identify outliers, concentrations, and patterns that warrant deeper investigation. The detail pages linked from each entity in the table above give the full per-entity context: time-series history where available, related metrics from adjacent tables, and links onward to the underlying source records. The methodology page explains how an entity earns inclusion in the dataset and how the ranking column is computed at the source.

What this analysis cannot tell us

FEMA's incident type taxonomy has evolved over time, categories like 'Severe Storm(s)' and 'Severe Ice Storm' overlap in many declarations and the same physical event may be coded differently in different years. The NOAA Storm Events Database uses a separate taxonomy (e.g. 'Thunderstorm Wind', 'Hail', 'Tornado') that does not directly map to FEMA's incident types. Counts here reflect distinct declarations, not the total cost, lives lost, or geographic footprint of each event; a single major hurricane declaration may affect dozens of counties and impose billions in damage, while a smaller emergency declaration may affect a single jurisdiction. Readers comparing hazard categories should consult the methodology page for the full code mapping and the agency-published documentation.

Related cut from a separate NOAA extract

Top 10 NOAA Storm Events Database event types by raw event count, not the same population as FEMA incident-type declarations (different agency, different event definition, 2015–2025 window vs OpenFEMA 1953–present)

records
Source NOAA NCEI Storm Events Database As of 2015–2025

Related data

Sources