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DATA DESCRIPTION AND ANALYSIS Sources of the Data The data base for this analysis was compiled from successive downloads of official disaster declaration information provided to Sylves by the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in 1994*, 1997*, 2001*, 2003*, 2005*, and 2006*. This information is publicly displayed within this website. It is imperative that site users understand that it is impossible to obtain regular, daily updates of financial changes to declarations whose spending is not closed out. Therefore, this site is not updated whenever a disaster occurs. Web users can access DHS-FEMA presidential declaration website to learn about major disasters, emergencies, and fire suppression declarations issued on an ongoing basis. However, DHS-FEMA usually does not make spending on these declarations open to the public. DHS-FEMA also does not make public the president’s turndown actions on governor requests for declarations. Geographic materials in this website stem from a University of Delaware site license to use ESRI ArcGIS products. The original datasets were made available to the authors in Microsoft Excel. Information about governors in office when disaster declaration decisions were made came from Wikipedia filtered. State demographic information was drawn from the U.S. Census Bureau's webpage. Specifically, the variables of the dataset originate from the sources listed under references below. The basic unit of analysis is the governor request
to the president for a declaration of major disaster or emergency. The
president may deny a governor's request, resulting in a TURNDOWN. The
president may approve a governor's request, resulting in an APPROVAL.
Variable names are listed below. Disclaimer: Information in DHS/FEMA's major disaster, emergency, and turndown records is subject to change over time. This is especially true of FEMA cost information on active declarations. The data downloads of DHS/FEMA financial information displayed in this website should be considered temporary snapshots of what disaster spending was at the time of each respective download. Cost data furnished in this site come from the latest set of DHS/FEMA records (July 31, 2006) made available to the site developers (See notes below). The PERI Foundation and the developers of this site make this government-provided and public information freely available to users, but PERI and the site developers cannot be held responsible for changes the government makes in its issuance of declaration information, particularly with regard to costs and funding. Users who identify errors of any type in this dataset are invited to email the site developers whose names are listed in the "contact" portion of this site. Any state or county official, or any other person, who wishes to share declaration information with us, or who wants to direct us to online state and local records pertaining to presidential declarations of major disaster or emergency, are warmly and gratefully encouraged to do so. *1993-94 refers to FEMA Daris Report 1.1D: Declarations & Turndowns - Detail" 11/18/93 and FEMA DARIS Report 1.1D: declarations and Turndowns - Detail" 4/7/94 and 4/4/94. *1997 (June) major disaster, emergency, and turndown data provided by U.S. FEMA to Dr. Sylves from FEMA's DARIS records management system. FEMA obligations information came from "Obligations from IFMIS, 4/30/97" (22 pages). *2001 (December 6) "FEMA Declarations and Turndowns (detail)" (20 pages) which contains major disaster, emergency, and turndown data, including FEMA cost obligations provided by FEMA's Declaration's Unit, as downloaded from the agency's FEMIS records management system. *2003 involves download of major disaster and emergency declarations, 10/1989-3/2003 including FEMA obligations, under Justification of Estimates Fiscal Year 2004, March 2003. This was provided by DHS, Emergency Preparedness and Response, in a report to Congress. *2005 material refers to Turn downs of Governor Requests for Presidential Declarations of major disaster or emergency under Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Request: Case No.: 05-171. Request filed by Dr. Sylves through Senator Thomas R. Carper's (DE) Dover Delaware office June 14, 2005. U.S. Department of Homeland Security/FEMA for download done on July 22, 2005. Letter to Professor Richard Sylves from FOIA Specialist Jeff Ovall, Office of General Counsel, DHS/FEMA, August 1, 2005. *2006 material comes from DFSR Obligations Summary - Grouped by Event & Fiscal Year, Reporting Cycle: July 31, 2006 to Sylves. This dataset includes major disaster declarations issued from 10/15/88 (DR# 816) through 7/13/06 (DR#1655) and emergency declarations issued from 5/10/92 (EM#3093) through 7/21/06 (EM#3267). For a Guide to the Disaster Declaration Process
and Federal Disaster Assistance see, http://www.fema.gov/rrr/dec_guid.shtm.
This link not only provides information about the process but also lists
addresses, phones, and email addresses of FEMA's 10 regional offices (accessed
January 6, 2006).
Variable Names and Value Labels DECLARATION NUMBER (DEC-NUM) DEC-NUM: Approved request cases are assigned serially ordered major disaster declaration numbers or emergency declaration numbers. Major disasters are serially numbered from declaration #1, a Georgia tornado approved for a declaration by President Eisenhower in May 1953. There is no major disaster declaration #10 or #1639 but all other major disaster declaration numbers are valid and in series. Emergency declarations are listed in a 3000 series, meaning that the first approved declaration for emergency, issued in 1974 by President Nixon, was numbered 3001. Every governor request is assigned a request number by FEMA when it is received. Turndowns are catalogued by their original request number. Until the year 2000, each request number was presented as a five-digit number with the first two digits designating the year of the request. The first turndown was issued by President Eisenhower in 1953 as 53001. Turndowns for 2000 begin in the series (00)001. Correspondingly, turndowns in year 2001 begin with (01)001 and likewise (02)001 would be the first turndown of 2002 etc. This project was done in two stages. The first stage, made available to the public by PERI in 2005 displayed declaration and turndown data from 1981 through 2003. This second stage of the project displays data beginning in 1953 and ending in 2006. In other words, this second stage of the project adds data for the years 1953 (from start of first serially number major disaster declaration) to 1980 and also incorporates three new years of data, 2004-2006 (ending July 31, 2006). The two successive contracts were agreed to by site developers at University of Delaware and PERI authorities. STATE: STATE represents the name of the state (including
the District of Columbia) or trust territory whose governor (chief executive)
requested a presidential declaration of major disaster or emergency declaration,
or whose governor received a turndown notice from the federal government.
Please note that the District of Columbia and U.S. Trust Territories, some of which are now independent nations, are included in the data set. Also Trust Territory (TT) was not specifically identified in the data provided to the authors. COUNTIES: Counties* are an important political subdivision in this data set. When governors ask for presidential declarations of major disaster or emergency, they stipulate which counties in their state they want included in the declaration. In some instances, particularly for smaller land area states or in cases of state-wide disaster devastation, the governor requests that every county in the state be added to the declaration. However, most disasters and emergencies do not encompass an entire state. Some governor requests for declarations are reviewed on a highly expedited basis and the governor's request letter may be all that is needed by the president to issue a declaration, something often the case for very-large scale or acute disasters or if a condition of emergency exists that requires an immediate federal response. In FEMA, and its predecessor agencies (1951 - 1979), officials customarily reviewed disaster losses of the counties mentioned in the governor's request to ascertain that they met or exceeded certain qualifying thresholds. However, under the law, the president is free to disregard federal disaster agency recommendations regarding the worthiness of a governor's declaration request. Not every state employs a standard definition of county. For example, in Louisiana, Parishes serve functions identical to counties. Alaska's version of counties is Boroughs (e.g., Anchorage, Bristol Bay, North Star, etc.) or Census Areas (Bethel, Dillingham, Wade Hampton, etc.). Virginia permits cities of certain size to function as a county, but the state has standard county units as well. Some states engage in city-county consolidations. New York City is composed of five counties (boroughs) but those counties exist in name only, as the city is governed by a central administration that employs various borough offices. Please note as well that in some states, Connecticut for example; counties have no formal government organization. Some U.S. Trust Territories define specific islands as counties (e.g., in Hawaii counties are Maui, Hawaii, etc. and for Virgin Islands county equivalents are St. Croix, St. John, and St. Thomas) and for some of these jurisdictions cities are used as county equivalents (e.g., Northern Marianas Islands uses Municipality-Rota, etc., and in Puerto Rico see Municipios: Adjuntas, Aguada, Aguadilla, etc.). Regardless, governors (including the Mayor of the District of Columbia and governors or commissioners who head U.S. Trust Territories) request presidential declarations of major disaster and emergency for their state government and for the affected counties (or subdivisions) of their state. FEMA treats the District of Columbia as an equivalent to a county. The federal government will treat county surrogates as if they are counties, but the federal government does not bypass organized county governments or their surrogates to provide declarations through states directly to cities or other sub-county municipal jurisdictions. Remember as well, counties that receive federal disaster relief funds under a presidential declaration may pass some or most of those funds on to the incorporated municipalities within their jurisdictions, subject to the rules applied by each respective state. States obviously play a more central role in dispensing federal funds to incorporated municipalities in cases where county governments are unable, or are not permitted, to handle this responsibility. Finally, once a presidential declaration of major disaster or emergency is issued, FEMA officials, often led by the disaster's Federal Coordinating Officer and others, may entertain governor requests that certain counties which were not included in the original declaration be added to an in force declaration. In such cases, the decision to add a county, or counties, does not have to go to the President but may be made by the Director of FEMA in the name of the president. *County data were compiled from "FEMA Designated Areas" (pgs 1-59) FEMA download dated 12/6/01 for period of declaration 1/1/97-12/6/01. See also FEMA DARIS Report 1.1D: Declarations and Turndowns - Detail" 5/2/53 to 9/30/93 downloaded 4/4/94. Please note that DHS-FEMA’s presidential disaster declaration web site displays the counties included in declarations in declarations for most of the 1990s and virtually every year of the current decade to date. The investigators consulted the DHS-FEMA web site and painstakingly checked and re-checked the counties included in disaster declarations and incorporated that information into this site. In 2003, officials at FEMA provided Sylves a file of counties included in all declarations from DR#183 onward. DR#183 was issued 12/24/64 and represents the federal government’s earliest use of mainframe computing information storage of disaster declaration information. In order to identify counties included in declarations issued before DR#183, that is for the period 5/2/53 (DR#1) to 12/10/64 (DR#182), Sylves consulted the Federal Register and documents provided to him during his research visit in 2003 to the Eisenhower Presidential Library in Abilene, Kansas. Sylves wishes to thank the excellent staff of the Eisenhower Presidential Library for their artful help. For a full summer month of 2006, Sylves researched Federal Register records for 1953 to 1964 at the University of Delaware Morris Library, with the help of Rebecca Knight, whom he would like to thank for her assistance. Sylves’ effort was needed to track down counties included in declarations #1 to #182. Sylves was able to find all of the counties for President Kennedy’s disaster declarations and most of the counties on declarations issued in Eisenhower’s second term (1957-1960). However, the Eisenhower first term declaration counties were extremely difficult to track down largely because Eisenhower’s declaration managing agency from 1953 to 1957, does not appear to have used the Federal Register to make announcement of counties included in declarations. Annual agency reports to Congress were spotty in supplying this information. Also, major newspaper coverage was too piecemeal to be considered reliable or definitive on the matter of which counties were included in these old declarations. Nevertheless, Sylves has done considerable gap filling in providing information about counties included in old declarations. Some may ask “who cares” about counties included in old declarations. There are those who may be interested in the full 53 (1953-2006) history of disaster declarations inside the U.S. and down to the county level. County and city officials may be surprised to learn their jurisdictions disaster history over the last half-century. REGION: REGION, refers to the FEMA region number of the state whose governor is requesting a major disaster or emergency declaration. FEMA has 10 regions and these conform to the standard federal region demarcations used by many federal agencies. Region 1 FEMA includes Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and Vermont. Region 2 FEMA is composed of New Jersey, New York, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands. Region 3 FEMA contains Delaware, District of Columbia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and West Virginia. Region 4 FEMA incorporates Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee. Region 5 FEMA envelopes the Great Lakes states of Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Wisconsin. Region 6 FEMA embodies Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas. Region 7 FEMA comprises Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Region 8 FEMA has Colorado, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah and Wyoming. Region 9 FEMA state and territories are Arizona, California, Hawaii, Nevada, Guam, American Samoa, Marshall Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Northern Marianas, Palau, and Trust Territory (undesignated by FEMA, assumed Pacific as it applied to a typhoon). Region 10 FEMA covers Alaska, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington State.
DATE: DATE, is the day on which the presidential decision on the governor request is announced and this includes the day, month, and year of that decision. In FEMA records it is listed as ACTION DATE. Please note that turndown actions may be appealed by the requesting governor, but only a small fraction of appeals win approvals. Declaration decisions are assigned to each president on the basis of who was President on the day the approval or turndown action was made. The authors painstakingly reviewed the action date of each governor request so to ensure that each declaration approval or turndown was assigned to the president who actually made the decision. This work involved tracking who was in office right down to the last day a president was in office. In other words, approval or turndown actions taken in the month a new president is inaugurated are differentiated so outgoing presidents are correctly assigned declaration decisions they made and in-coming presidents are correctly assigned declaration decisions they were responsible for. The site developers made a conscious decision to omit the date of each governor's original request on grounds that this would only confuse visitors to the site. In the vast majority of cases, presidents act on governor requests for declarations of major disasters in a period of days, and sometimes in only hours. However, in a significant number of cases the federal disaster agency is given time (weeks or months) to authenticate losses and establish deservedness. Sometimes states are slow to provide all the information needed by the federal disaster agency. Sometimes presidents and their staffs want time to cogitate on the deservedness of a request. Sometimes state and federal disaster agency officials disagree about the magnitude of disaster loss, or they disagree on the amount of private insurance available to disaster victims, or they dispute other matters with the result that a prolonged period grows between the date of the governor's request and the date of the president's action on the request. TYPE AND DISASTER DESCRIPTION: TYPE, refers to
the type of primary disaster agent* listed in the governor's request for
a declaration. FEMA's letter abbreviations for TYPE come from its DARIS
system for declaration approvals and turndowns used over much of the 1900s.
FEMA's information management system, used after 1999, is labeled FEMIS.
Data types displayed in this list were provided by FEMA to an author (Richard
Sylves) in June 1997, December 2001, March 2004, and August 2006. The
list below depicts letter TYPE code to the left and corresponding DISASTER
DESCRIPTION to the right.
Many, if not most, disasters have a variety of manifestations and after effects. FEMA's assignment of primary incident type to any single disaster rests on what a governor described as the nature of the event and/or what appeared to be the lead or primary cause or force producing the disaster. Also certain categories encompass sets of destructive forces. The category "Severe Storm" may include hailstorms, lightning damage, and strong winds. The "Snow/Ice" category encompassed snowstorms, blizzards, ice storms, unseasonable freezes, etc. *Notes: FEMA's letter abbreviations are used in its DARIS system for declaration approvals and turndowns to 1999. FEMA's information management system used after 1999 is labeled FEMIS. Data types displayed in this list were provided by FEMA to the author in June 1997 and December 2001. Disaster data provided to Sylves in August 2006 is from the DFSR Obligations Summary as of July 31, 2006. The "Flood and Tornado" category used from 1953 to 1999 must be explained. Until 1999, FEMA officials did not want to differentiate "flood and tornado" when both may be considered "primary incident" in the same disaster. In 1999 FEMA discontinued the Flood and Tornado (A) classification and since 1999 made "A" stand for "tsunami" primary incidents. At this writing, no primary incident "tsunami" disasters have occurred in the United States in the interval 1999-2005. However, in the past there have been major disaster declarations issued for tsunami caused damage in California, Hawaii, and Alaska, though there was no category for tsunami at the time of these disasters. Fire incorporates major structure fires that devastated major portions of towns or cities. Forest fires, including urban/wildland interface fires, are only included if they were declared major disasters or emergencies by the President. The Fire category excludes Fire Suppression (FS) declarations, issued for a vast number of forest fires or urban/wildland interface fires, because FS declarations are not approved or rejected by President but involve the judgment of U.S Forest Service and FEMA officials. Most FS declarations do not generate FEMA spending unless portions of developed areas are damaged by forest fire encroachment. In 1999, FEMA disaggregated the previous "Snow/Ice" category "S" and created primary incident categories - "Freezing"="G"; "Snow" ="S"; and, "Severe Ice Storm"="O." Terrorism=I, Civil Unrest=U, and Chemical=L primary incident types were included under "Human Cause" "Y" before 1999. Chemical=L is not replacing Toxic Substances=X but stands for chemical agents or chemical attack incidents. Biological=B denotes biological disasters such as bio-terror attacks or disease pandemics. Before 1999, crop losses were included under drought or snow/ice. Since 1999 "Crop Losses" "Q" has its own category. DECLARATION COST VARIABLE [COST($)] :Some federal disaster assistance is dispensed directly to eligible individuals and families and these monies are included in the totals (for cost source information see pages 2-3 above). To be precise, the COST($) encompasses spending in PUBLIC ASSISTANCE (government to government disaster relief often for infrastructure repair or payments to eligible non-profit organizations), INDIVIDUAL ASSISTANCE (which is all categories of individual and family assistance), and MITIGATION spending (post-disaster federal assistance calculated as a percentage [15%] total federal disaster relief paid out on a declaration). The totals also include various administrative expenses incurred by FEMA. Also included is MISSION ASSIGNMENT funding under which FEMA permits another federal agency working a president declared major disaster or emergency to draw funding from the President’s Disaster Fund to pay for some expense not covered in the mission assigned agency’s own budget. It is absolutely imperative that those using this site understand that the funding amount labeled COST($) is the total amount of federal disaster relief (converted to 2006 constant dollars) recorded in FEMA's (and FEMA/DHS) records for the STATE, and this sum includes the state pass-through amount (the bulk of the funding in virtually all declarations) provided to "all of the counties included in the declaration." Please DO NOT conclude that the COST($) amount is the total federal relief going to any specific county. The amount of FEMA disaster relief funding dispensed county-by-county was not available to the authors and needs to be researched declaration by declaration through each state's respective emergency management agency (not an easy task). Please note that inflators and deflators used in this study were taken from the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis at http://woodrow.mpls.frb.fed.us/research/data/us/calc/hist1800.cfm (accessed January 6, 2006). Also, since 2006 is the base year, inflators are used for FEMA obligations in declarations from 1953 through 2006. Remember that costs paid out on a declaration may be compiled over several years so a FEMA spending total on any single declaration needs to be considered a cumulated, often multi-year, total. Inflator conversions are listed in their entirety below for those who wish to convert that any constant dollar total back to a nominal dollar total. Constant dollars are a good way to control for the effect of inflation on disaster spending. Without conversion to 2006 constant dollars, in other words if nominal dollars spent in the year of the disaster is used, old disaster spending will look ridiculously small. Using 2006 constant dollars permits us to control for inflation (and even deflation) in our spending records. Factors used to convert nominal cost data to 2006 constant dollars are below.
COST($) is the official cost of the disaster adjusted for inflation and calculated in 2006 U.S. dollars. The amount represents the total sum of FEMA money (all FEMA spending categories combined) spent on the approved declaration for major disaster or emergency. FEMA closed its books on all pre-1989 disaster declarations and so dollar amounts for pre-1989 disasters are generally fixed and final, as are most declarations that pre-date 2003. COST($) encompasses declaration spending totals from 1953-2006. FEMA's August 2006 download for obligated declaration spending is the latest one available to the authors. Inflators apply to all declarations from 1953-2005. Please be advised that FEMA spending for recent disasters (less than 5 years old) may be ongoing and so the total used here was the sum reported at the time of the FEMA download and may not represent what total FEMA spending for the declaration eventually sums to now. For example, FEMA spending on the 9/11 declared disaster for New York City and for the 2005 Katrina Hurricane disaster for Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida may continue for many years into the future. The constant dollar federal relief variable COST($) does include money dispensed by FEMA to other federal agencies under "mission assignment." When a federal agency working a president-declared major disaster or emergency incurs spending obligations, officials of that agency may ask FEMA to reimburse them for these costs under terms of "mission assignment." FEMA (and FEMA/DHS) officials, from 1953-2006, had authority to accept or reject federal agency requests for mission assignment funding. However, FEMA total spending on declarations does NOT necessarily encompass all federal spending on these declarations. Many federal agencies have disaster or emergency spending accounts from which they can provide disaster relief, either under a presidential declaration of major disaster or emergency or without such a declaration. Similarly, some federal agencies may spend federal money to provide disaster relief but they are denied FEMA mission assignment reimbursement and must absorb the cost from their own or other accounts. Sums of federal spending from these accounts are NOT included in COST($). FEMA total spending does not include disaster or emergency related private sector spending, private insurance spending, state or local spending, or individual spending for declarations. COST($) also excludes the amount of state and local match that may be required under terms of an approved presidential declaration of major disaster or emergency. FEMA's total here also excludes federal payouts made on disasters under the National Flood Insurance program. The bulk of FEMA spending on declared disasters flows from spending authority that resides in the President's Disaster Fund, a fund that often needs to be replenished by a congressionally approved emergency supplemental appropriation after very major disasters. Why might the COST($) amount contained in the site for various declarations be inaccurate? The developers of this site want users to understand that cost information provided by the government is time-bound. Certain types of spending, say for example long-term infrastructure costs or in cases of judicial decisions against FEMA made years after FEMA ostensibly closed the books for a declaration, may trigger new spending that makes cost data in this site obsolete. Cost information is in effect, a moving target for declarations whose books remain unclosed out. Moreover, FEMA does not make it easy for researchers to obtain cost information for declarations of major disaster or emergency. As a general rule of thumb, the older the disaster declaration the firmer the COST($) is likely to be. Those who would like to track down cost information should contact FEMA/DHS directly or should seek out such information with the help of one of their elected representatives (Senator or Congressperson). Occasionally such information may be available in congressional records, in state emergency management agencies, or in other public sites besides this one. PRESIDENT: PRESIDENT refers to the name of the president who made the decision on the governor's request for a major disaster or emergency declaration. President Dwight D. Eisenhower (1/20/1953-1/20/1961)
GOVERNOR: GOVERNOR refers to the name of the governor in office on the date of action on the declaration by the president, as reported by FEMA. The Mayor of the District of Columbia and the governor, commissioner, or chief executive of each U.S. Trust Territory or Commonwealth is included in this site. Site visitors should be aware that there is a remote possibility that the governor who made the original request for a presidential declaration of major disaster or emergency may not be in office at the time the president decides on his or her request. However, one can assume that it is rare that a new governor would ever withdraw the previous governor's request for a declaration. In turn, one may also assume that a new governor would be supportive of the previous governor's request for a declaration. It is fair to say that virtually every governor favors presidential approval of declaration requests submitted by his or her state. Be careful in assigning governors credit for approvals or blame for turndowns. Many approval or turndown decisions rest on the accuracy, quantity, and timeliness of loss information compiled by county and state governments and submitted to the federal government, often as part of the governor's official request. Sometimes governors make requests for disasters or emergencies that are marginal. Marginality can involve disputes over whether or not the state could recover from the disaster without federal help, what the amount of damage covered by private insurance actually is, what the cause of the event was that sparked the request, and other matters. For example, governors may not have formal authority or a budgeted account to pay for certain calamities they wish to define as disasters or emergencies. Some governors come to office either unaware, or ill-advised, believing that the president will customarily issue declarations for certain types of events the governor chooses to define as a disaster or emergency. For more information about disaster declarations
visit the summary page of this site and click on Presidents, Disasters,
and Policy, Richard T. Sylves. |