The clearest national source on US disasters is FEMA’s Disaster Declarations Summaries, which records every federally declared disaster since 1953. After deduplicating the county-level records down to distinct declarations, here is which states have faced the most — and why.
The answer first
California (395) and Texas (388) have the most federally declared disasters of any US state, followed by Oklahoma (258) and Washington (214). Wildfire is the leading hazard across most of the top tier. These are raw counts of distinct declarations from 1953 to 2026, not adjusted for population or land area.
Top 10 states by total declarations
| Rank | State | Total declarations | Most common hazard |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | California | 395 | Fire |
| 2 | Texas | 388 | Fire |
| 3 | Oklahoma | 258 | Fire |
| 4 | Washington | 214 | Fire |
| 5 | Florida | 188 | Fire |
| 6 | Oregon | 166 | Fire |
| 7 | New Mexico | 125 | Fire |
| 8 | Arizona | 120 | Fire |
| 9 | New York | 118 | Severe Storm |
| 10 | Montana | 112 | Fire |
See the complete sorted table on our most disaster declarations ranking, or open any state’s full profile from the states index.
Why the big states dominate
Three things push California and Texas to the top:
- Size and county count. A single weather system crossing a large state can trigger declarations across many counties, and more land simply means more exposure over 70+ years.
- Hazard mix. The top states combine wildfire risk with floods, severe storms and (for Texas and Florida) hurricanes.
- No normalization. FEMA’s figure is the raw number of declarations. It is not per-capita or per-square-mile, so the ranking partly reflects how big and varied a state is.
If you normalized by area or population, smaller but intensely hazard-prone states would climb. We deliberately report the raw federal count because that is what the source contains — see our methodology for how the deduplication works.
Fire dominates the leaderboard
The striking pattern in the table above is how often Fire is the #1 hazard. Nationwide, fire is the largest incident category by far:
| Incident type | Declarations (nationwide) |
|---|---|
| Fire | 1,742 |
| Severe Storm | 1,129 |
| Flood | 919 |
| Hurricane | 454 |
| Tornado | 182 |
A big reason is that FEMA issues Fire Management Assistance (FM) grants to help states fight large wildfires — these are quick, frequent declarations that add up. This is covered in our understanding FEMA disaster declarations explainer, and the most wildfire declarations ranking breaks fire down by state.
What about the lowest-risk states?
At the other end, compact northeastern jurisdictions record the fewest declarations — the District of Columbia, Delaware and Rhode Island each have fewer than 45. For several of them the leading hazard is hurricane rather than fire, reflecting their coastal exposure. Browse any of them from the states index.
A note on interpretation
A high declaration count does not by itself tell you a place is “dangerous” to live — it reflects decades of federal disaster response across a large, varied state. For personal risk, combine this with local flood maps and seismic data. Read what a disaster declaration means for homeowners and insurance for the practical angle.
HazardMap is not affiliated with or endorsed by FEMA. These are factual public-data summaries for general information only, not safety or insurance advice. Verify with FEMA’s official records.