What 70,243 disaster declarations and 847,116 Public Assistance projects actually show

Finding 1 of 5

A declaration row is a place, not a storm

The declarations snapshot has 70,243 designated-area rows covering 5,244 unique disaster numbers in 59 states and territories. Declaration dates run from 1953-05-02 through 2026-08-15.

Of those 5,244 unique disasters, 2,925 are Major Disasters (DR), 1,668 are Fire Management Assistance (FM), and 651 are Emergencies (EM). Fire is the most common unique event type (1,775 of 5,244) because an FM declaration is usually one locality. Severe storms produce the most designated-area rows: 19,429 of 70,243.

Calendar year 2020 is the peak year in this file: 9,712 of 70,243 designated-area rows and 315 of 5,244 unique disasters. 658 of 70,243 rows (341 unique disasters) have an incident begin date and no incident end date.

Finding 2 of 5

The common hazards are not where the dollars sit

The Public Assistance snapshot has 847,116 obligated project worksheets on 1,783 unique disaster numbers. Declaration dates run from 1998-08-26 through 2026-06-30. Federal share obligated sums to $283,657,100,484.80.

Using the same incident-type groups as the declarations file:

Tropical cyclone plus biological is 303,980 of 847,116 rows (35.9%) and $237,172,096,130.64 of $283,657,100,484.80 (83.6%). Severe storms are the modal worksheet and a small slice of the money.

Groups are derived from official incidentType only. The is_covid title flag is narrower (15,599 rows; $35,423,960,340.16) because many COVID-era worksheets are typed Biological and do not say “COVID” in the project title. This brief uses the official type for the biological total.

Finding 3 of 5

A thin tail of worksheets holds most of the federal share

3,315 of 847,116 worksheets (0.39%) have a federal share of $10 million or more. Those 3,315 rows hold $187,685,022,892.07 — 66.2% of all federal share obligated in the file.

FEMA’s own Large/Small size flag is less extreme and still lopsided: 119,424 of 847,116 rows (14.1%) are Large and hold $266,298,601,198.25 (93.9%). The other 727,692 Small worksheets hold $17,358,499,286.55 (6.1%).

One disaster number is enough to move the total. DR-4339, Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, declared 2017-09-20, is 11,341 of 847,116 worksheets and $35,710,859,856.01 (12.6%) of federal share obligated. The ten disaster numbers with the largest federal totals hold 51.3% of the $283,657,100,484.80.

Finding 4 of 5

2020 declarations are 37.4% of every PA dollar in the file

Worksheets whose parent disaster was declared in calendar year 2020 are 53,747 of 847,116 rows (134 unique disaster numbers) and $106,198,253,099.30 of $283,657,100,484.80 federal share obligated (37.4%).

Almost all of the biological money is in that year: 40,053 of 40,064 biological worksheets were declared in 2020 ($97,869,341,310.15). The remaining 11 biological rows were declared in 2021 ($2,455,421.33). No biological PA row in this snapshot was declared before 2020 or after 2021.

That is a statement about this obligated-project table, not about lives, cases, or people. Applicant names are not in the file.

Finding 5 of 5

The join is clean, and it is sparse

Every one of the 1,783 unique disaster numbers in the Public Assistance file appears in the declarations file. There are no PA-only disaster numbers in this snapshot.

The reverse is not true. Only 1,783 of 5,244 unique declarations have an obligated PA project here. Restricting to the PA file’s coverage start, 1,783 of 3,648 unique declarations dated on or after 1998-08-26 (48.9%) have at least one PA row.

1,766 unique disasters in that same window are flagged has_public_assistance in the declarations file and still have zero rows in the PA snapshot. The official PA source excludes open (pre-obligation) projects. The live table also moved during the fetch: OpenFEMA $count was 847,277 when the walk finished; 847,116 unique worksheets were written (gap 161, 0.019%).