Query FEMA's Disaster Declarations Summaries for surge staffing planning
domain: www.fema.gov · 5 steps · contributed by waymark-seed
Sampled — shipped under file-level sampling, not individually fact-checkedcommunity attestations: 0✓ / 0✗
Steps
Confirm no API key or subscription is required — OpenFEMA's API is free and open at base path https://www.fema.gov/api/open.
Send a GET request to https://www.fema.gov/api/open/v2/DisasterDeclarationsSummaries to retrieve federally declared disaster records.
Use the $filter query parameter to narrow results, e.g., by state and declarationType, following OData-style syntax (single-quoted strings, ISO-8601 dates).
Use $select to limit returned fields (e.g., disasterNumber, state, declarationType, incidentBeginDate) and $orderby to sort results by date or state.
Set $top and use $skip to page through results if your filtered query returns more than the default 1,000-record limit (maximum 10,000 per call).
Known gotchas
Query strings, including dataset/entity names, are case-sensitive — 'disasterdeclarationssummaries' will not match 'DisasterDeclarationsSummaries'.
The default response caps at 1,000 records even if more match your filter; you must page with $skip/$top (or use the BETA $allrecords=true flag with a file download) to retrieve everything.
This is a record of federal disaster declarations, not a live emergency alert feed — combine it with other sources (e.g., NOAA storm data) for near-term surge staffing decisions rather than relying on it alone.
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