US federal disaster declarations that bring Public Assistance: October 10, 2025 to October 9, 2026, declaration by declaration

This page reports what the official source says. It is not legal advice: ask the office named here. It is a table of federal disaster declarations that include the Public Assistance program, built from FEMA's OpenFEMA data and run on October 9, 2026. FEMA has not reviewed or endorsed it. It lists no debris volumes and no tree work, because the data set has no such fields.

What the table covers

The source is the OpenFEMA Disaster Declarations Summaries data set, version 2. The query asked for every record with a declaration date on or after October 10, 2025 where the Public Assistance program is marked as declared. The earliest declaration date that came back is October 22, 2025 and the last is October 7, 2026. The data set holds one record per designated area, so the query returned 1,929 area records. They fall into 147 declarations once grouped by disaster number and state, and the table shows one row for each: 64 fire management, 57 major disaster and 26 emergency declarations. The Areas line counts the areas with Public Assistance declared, such as counties, cities or tribal areas, as the data set lists them. The data set's description says tribal nation declarations are included in state data, and the table includes Guam (GU), the Northern Mariana Islands (MP) and the District of Columbia (DC).

The incident types in these rows, as the data set labels them, are Fire (68), Severe Storm (22), Winter Storm (20), Flood (16), Tropical Storm (7), Typhoon (4), Straight-Line Winds (4), Hurricane (3), Chemical, Other and Tornado (one each). The incident type under each title and the title come from separate fields and do not always agree. One Alaska declaration has the incident type Winter Storm and the title Severe Storm, for example. The table shows both as published.

How to read the codes

The prefix on a declaration is its type. DR is a major disaster declaration, EM is an emergency declaration and FM is a fire management declaration. The data set's own description lists the number ranges: 0001 to 1999 major disaster, 2000 to 2999 fire management, 3000 to 3999 emergency declaration (special emergency), 4000 to 4999 major disaster and 5000 to 5999 fire management. In the table, every EM number is in the 3000 range, every DR number in the 4000 range and every FM number in the 5000 range. The data set also warns that it is raw data from FEMA's emergency management system and is subject to a small percentage of human error.

What the law says these declarations are

Section 5170 of title 42 of the United States Code says a request for a major disaster declaration is made by the Governor of the affected State. The request must be based on a finding that the disaster is of such severity and magnitude that effective response is beyond the capabilities of the State and the affected local governments. The section also lets the chief executive of an affected Indian tribal government make the request.

Section 5173 is the debris removal section. It lets the President make grants to State and local governments, and to private nonprofit facility owners, for removing debris from a major disaster, with a federal share of at least 75 percent of eligible cost. The tests FEMA's guide applies to trees are on the FEMA debris and hazardous trees page.

What the table does not say

A row shows that Public Assistance was declared for an area. It does not show that any debris work was approved, how much debris there was or how many trees were involved. The data set has no debris flag. A declaration missing from the table either had no Public Assistance marked or was outside the query window; which of the two applies to a missing number was not checked. The run date is October 9, 2026, and declarations after the last date shown are not in the table.

The declarations

Sources

• FEMA, OpenFEMA API: Disaster Declarations Summaries v2 (JSON), run October 9, 2026, read October 9, 2026
• FEMA, OpenFEMA data set metadata: Disaster Declarations Summaries (JSON), read October 9, 2026
• govinfo, 42 U.S.C. 5170 Procedure for declaration (2023 edition), read October 9, 2026
• govinfo, 42 U.S.C. 5173 Debris removal (2023 edition), read October 9, 2026