The finding
This restoration demand volatility index ranks US states by how predictable their disaster workload is, not by how large it is. Across 17,942 de-duplicated county-level FEMA disaster declarations from 2015 to 2025, the coefficient of variation in annual county declarations runs from 0.46 in Washington to 1.53 in Virginia among the 26 states with at least 150 events. A low figure means an annual baseline you can hire permanent crews against. A high figure means surge work that argues for subcontracting and rented equipment.
Headline figures
In this report
- Why volatility is the planning number
- The volatility table, steadiest first
- Volume against volatility
- Four volatility bands
- The surge ratio
- The national series year by year
- The two extremes, and what each one costs you
- Permanent crews or subcontractors
- Owned equipment or rented
- Out-of-state reciprocity
- Method
- Reproduce this
- What this does not show
- Questions this report answers
- Sources
Key findings
- Volatility varies more than volume. Among the 26 states with at least 150 county-level FEMA declarations from 2015 to 2025, the coefficient of variation spans 0.46 to 1.53, a 3.3 times range.
- Washington is the steadiest market in the FEMA data: 288 county declarations over the eleven years, a mean of 26.2 a year, and a standard deviation of only 12.1.
- Virginia is the jumpiest: 401 FEMA county declarations at a mean of 36.5 a year but a standard deviation of 55.6, with 200 of them falling in 2018 alone.
- 12 of the 26 states sit below a coefficient of variation of 1.00 in the FEMA declarations data, meaning the year-to-year swing is smaller than the average year itself. The median is 1.06.
- The surge ratio, peak year divided by mean year, reaches 5.5 in Virginia per the FEMA data. That state took 5.5 years of average work in 2018.
- High volume does not mean high volatility. South Carolina and Louisiana are both in the upper half by FEMA declaration volume, with 682 and 1,126 county declarations, yet their coefficients of variation are 0.64 and 1.45.
- The national series is steadier than its parts: summed across all states, annual county declarations in the FEMA data average 1,467 with a coefficient of variation of 0.28, below every state in the table, because regional peaks offset regional troughs.
- Texas carries the largest FEMA declaration volume at 1,219 county declarations, but ranks 21 of 26 on steadiness, so scale there arrives unevenly.
Why volatility is the planning number
Our companion piece, the restoration demand index, ranks states by how much declared disaster activity they carry. That answers where the work is. It does not answer the question a contractor actually has to decide, which is whether the work arrives at a rate you can staff for.
The instrument for that is the coefficient of variation: the standard deviation of annual county declarations divided by the mean. It is a unitless ratio, so a small state and a large one can be compared directly. A coefficient of 0.50 means the typical year-to-year deviation is half an average year. A coefficient of 1.50 means it is one and a half average years, which is to say the average has little predictive value at all.
Across the FEMA declarations data from 2015 to 2025, the mean coefficient of variation among the 26 states with at least 150 events is 1.03 and the median is 1.06. In other words, the typical state’s year-to-year swing is roughly the size of its average year. Planning against the average is the default mistake this figure is meant to prevent.
The volatility table, steadiest first
| Steadiness rank | State | Total county declarations | Mean per year | Standard deviation | Coefficient of variation | Peak year | Peak count |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Washington | 288 | 26.2 | 12.1 | 0.46 | 2015 | 47 |
| 2 | South Carolina | 682 | 62.0 | 39.9 | 0.64 | 2024 | 140 |
| 3 | Oklahoma | 587 | 53.4 | 40.3 | 0.75 | 2021 | 155 |
| 4 | Missouri | 526 | 47.8 | 37.7 | 0.79 | 2016 | 113 |
| 5 | Tennessee | 495 | 45.0 | 36.6 | 0.81 | 2025 | 125 |
| 6 | Kansas | 473 | 43.0 | 35.6 | 0.83 | 2019 | 117 |
| 7 | Nebraska | 348 | 31.6 | 26.6 | 0.84 | 2019 | 91 |
| 8 | North Dakota | 194 | 17.6 | 14.9 | 0.84 | 2020 | 44 |
| 9 | Iowa | 298 | 27.1 | 24.6 | 0.91 | 2019 | 81 |
| 10 | North Carolina | 911 | 82.8 | 75.3 | 0.91 | 2024 | 221 |
| 11 | Oregon | 173 | 15.7 | 14.7 | 0.94 | 2020 | 55 |
| 12 | Florida | 1,183 | 107.5 | 101.0 | 0.94 | 2024 | 340 |
| 13 | Arkansas | 396 | 36.0 | 37.3 | 1.04 | 2025 | 125 |
| 14 | West Virginia | 193 | 17.5 | 18.9 | 1.08 | 2015 | 67 |
| 15 | New York | 183 | 16.6 | 18.2 | 1.09 | 2021 | 63 |
| 16 | Kentucky | 1,152 | 104.7 | 116.3 | 1.11 | 2025 | 439 |
| 17 | Minnesota | 221 | 20.1 | 22.7 | 1.13 | 2022 | 65 |
| 18 | California | 556 | 50.5 | 57.7 | 1.14 | 2023 | 184 |
| 19 | Alabama | 435 | 39.5 | 46.1 | 1.17 | 2020 | 140 |
| 20 | Puerto Rico | 727 | 66.1 | 77.3 | 1.17 | 2017 | 198 |
| 21 | Texas | 1,219 | 110.8 | 136.5 | 1.23 | 2021 | 510 |
| 22 | Mississippi | 565 | 51.4 | 66.2 | 1.29 | 2021 | 202 |
| 23 | Georgia | 1,048 | 95.3 | 127.1 | 1.33 | 2017 | 344 |
| 24 | Louisiana | 1,126 | 102.4 | 147.9 | 1.45 | 2020 | 448 |
| 25 | South Dakota | 254 | 23.1 | 33.9 | 1.47 | 2019 | 123 |
| 26 | Virginia | 401 | 36.5 | 55.6 | 1.53 | 2018 | 200 |
Volume against volatility
The useful corner is bottom right: high volume with low volatility, which is a market that can support fixed capacity. The FEMA data puts South Carolina nearest to it among the higher-volume states, at 682 declarations and a coefficient of 0.64. The top right corner, high volume and high volatility, is where Louisiana sits at 1,126 declarations and 1.45. Both are busy states. They are not the same business.
Four volatility bands
Ranking all 26 states against each other is precise but hard to act on. Cutting them into bands on the quartiles of the coefficient itself is more usable. The lower quartile in the FEMA data sits at 0.84 and the upper quartile at 1.19.
| Band | Coefficient of variation | States | Members | Mean surge ratio |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Steady | 0.46 to 0.83 | 6 | WA, SC, OK, MO, TN, KS | 2.47x |
| Moderate | 0.84 to 1.04 | 7 | NE, ND, IA, NC, OR, FL, AR | 3.02x |
| Swingy | 1.08 to 1.17 | 7 | WV, NY, KY, MN, CA, AL, PR | 3.60x |
| Surge-driven | 1.23 to 1.53 | 6 | TX, MS, GA, LA, SD, VA | 4.56x |
The surge ratio column is the check that the bands mean something. It rises monotonically across them in the FEMA data, from 2.47 in the steady band to 4.56 in the surge-driven band, so a state’s volatility band also predicts how bad its worst year is relative to its normal one.
The surge ratio
The coefficient of variation describes the spread. The surge ratio describes the worst case, which is often what breaks a business. It is the peak year’s county declaration count divided by the mean year. A surge ratio of 4 means that in its worst year a state absorbed four years of average work.
| State | Peak year | Peak count | Mean per year | Surge ratio | Coefficient of variation |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Virginia | 2018 | 200 | 36.5 | 5.49x | 1.53 |
| South Dakota | 2019 | 123 | 23.1 | 5.33x | 1.47 |
| Texas | 2021 | 510 | 110.8 | 4.60x | 1.23 |
| Louisiana | 2020 | 448 | 102.4 | 4.38x | 1.45 |
| Kentucky | 2025 | 439 | 104.7 | 4.19x | 1.11 |
| Mississippi | 2021 | 202 | 51.4 | 3.93x | 1.29 |
| West Virginia | 2015 | 67 | 17.5 | 3.82x | 1.08 |
| New York | 2021 | 63 | 16.6 | 3.79x | 1.09 |
| California | 2023 | 184 | 50.5 | 3.64x | 1.14 |
| Georgia | 2017 | 344 | 95.3 | 3.61x | 1.33 |
| Alabama | 2020 | 140 | 39.5 | 3.54x | 1.17 |
| Oregon | 2020 | 55 | 15.7 | 3.50x | 0.94 |
Note which states appear here. Several of them are not high-volume markets at all. Virginia averages only 36.5 county declarations a year in the FEMA data, which makes the 200 it recorded in 2018 overwhelming relative to anything local capacity would be built for. Surge risk is not proportional to market size.
The national series year by year
Volatility is not only a state-level property. Summing every state in the FEMA data gives a national series whose own coefficient of variation is 0.28 against a mean of 1,467 county declarations a year. That is lower than almost every individual state, because peaks in one region offset troughs in another. A firm operating in several states inherits something closer to the national figure than to any single state’s.
| Year | County declarations | States with at least one | Against the annual mean |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | 963 | 32 | 0.66x |
| 2016 | 1,173 | 38 | 0.80x |
| 2017 | 1,661 | 35 | 1.13x |
| 2018 | 1,175 | 44 | 0.80x |
| 2019 | 1,661 | 41 | 1.13x |
| 2020 | 1,742 | 33 | 1.19x |
| 2021 | 1,952 | 41 | 1.33x |
| 2022 | 1,139 | 33 | 0.78x |
| 2023 | 1,112 | 41 | 0.76x |
| 2024 | 2,362 | 47 | 1.61x |
| 2025 | 1,195 | 34 | 0.81x |
The two extremes, and what each one costs you
Permanent crews or subcontractors
In Washington, the FEMA data shows a mean of 26.2 county declarations a year with a standard deviation of 12.1. A typical year lands within a narrow band, so a payroll sized to the average is busy in most years and only modestly over- or under-staffed in the rest. Permanent crews are affordable because they are chargeable most weeks, and the training, certification and consistency that come with permanent staff are the competitive advantage.
In Virginia, the same mean-based payroll would be wrong in almost every year. The mean is 36.5 county declarations but the standard deviation is 55.6, and 2018 alone produced 200. Staff for the peak and you carry idle crews through the quiet years. Staff for the mean and you turn away the work that pays for the decade. The structure that survives is a small permanent core that holds the client relationships and the quality control, plus pre-qualified subcontractors contracted before the season rather than during it.
Owned equipment or rented
The same logic decides the equipment question, and the surge ratio is the number to use. Washington has a surge ratio of 1.80 in the FEMA data, so peak demand is close to normal demand and owned dehumidifiers, air movers and trucks earn their keep across the year. Ownership is cheaper than rental over any reasonable utilisation. Our restoration seasonality calendar shows which months that peak demand tends to arrive in.
Virginia, at a surge ratio of 5.49, would need roughly 5.5 times its baseline fleet to cover its peak year without renting. Buying that fleet means most of it sits in storage for years at a time. The defensible position is to own the baseline and secure rental agreements and supplier priority ahead of the season, because in a declared disaster the equipment shortage arrives at the same moment as the work.
Out-of-state reciprocity
High volatility also changes where your licensing attention should go. A firm in a steady market such as Washington can reasonably operate inside one state. A firm in a market with a surge ratio above 4.4, which the FEMA data shows for Virginia, South Dakota, Texas, Louisiana, has two separate reasons to hold credentials in neighbouring states.
- In a local peak year, out-of-state crews will arrive to compete, and the firms that win the work are usually the ones already inside a carrier or programme panel rather than the ones with the nearest yard.
- In a local trough year, the neighbouring state may be in its peak. Declarations are regional, so holding credentials next door converts a quiet year at home into a working one.
Asbestos and lead abatement is regulated state by state, and the credentials do not travel automatically. Sorting that out while a declaration is active is too late, because the licensing queue lengthens exactly when demand spikes. Our asbestos accreditation map shows which agency accredits asbestos work in each state.
Method
How we counted. We retrieved FEMA disaster declaration summaries with a declaration date of 1 January 2015 or later from the OpenFEMA API on 2 October 2026, and de-duplicated them on the combination of disaster number, state, place code and designated area, which yields 17,942 distinct county-level declarations. We kept the thirteen incident types that generate restoration work and counted declarations per state per calendar year from 2015 to 2025. For each state we computed the total, the mean annual count, the population standard deviation of the eleven annual counts, the coefficient of variation as standard deviation divided by mean, the peak year, and the surge ratio as peak divided by mean. We report only the 26 states with at least 150 declarations, because a coefficient of variation computed on a handful of events is unstable. The 2026 calendar year is excluded because it is partial at the retrieval date and would understate the final year.
Reproduce this
Reproduce this
- Endpoint
https://www.fema.gov/api/open/v2/DisasterDeclarationsSummaries- Query
$filter=declarationDate ge '2015-01-01'- Rows retrieved
- 17,942 distinct county-level declarations after de-duplication
- Retrieved
- 2 October 2026
De-duplication is on the combination of disasterNumber, state, placeCode and designatedArea, because a single disaster number appears once per designated county. The thirteen restoration-relevant incident types are filtered after retrieval. The API pages at 1,000 rows via $top and $skip and needs no API key.
What this does not show
What this does not show
- Declarations are not jobs. A county declaration means federal assistance was authorised for that county. It does not count damaged buildings, insurance claims or restoration contracts. Two declarations can differ by orders of magnitude in the work they generate.
- County counts favour states with many counties. Because the unit is a county designation, a state subdivided into many small counties accumulates a higher count from the same storm than a state with a few large ones. Texas has 254 counties and Delaware has three.
- Declaration practice is political as well as meteorological. A declaration requires a state request and a federal approval, and thresholds, state capacity and administrative practice all affect whether one is sought and granted. The counts partly measure the declaration process rather than the weather.
- 2026 is excluded. The calendar year was incomplete at the retrieval date, so the series ends at 2025 to avoid a false decline in the final year.
- Eleven years is a short series for extremes. A single catastrophic year inside an eleven-point series moves the coefficient of variation substantially, which is why the surge ratio is reported alongside it rather than instead of it.
- States below 150 declarations are excluded. Their coefficients of variation are too unstable to rank, so the table is not a complete list of states.
- Uninsured and undeclared losses are absent. Burst pipes, appliance failures and single-building fires generate most routine restoration work and never appear in a disaster declaration.
Most quotable figures
- Volatility in US disaster demand spans a 3.3 times range, from a coefficient of variation of 0.46 in Washington to 1.53 in Virginia (computed from 17,942 county-level FEMA declarations, 2015 to 2025).
- Virginia has a surge ratio of 5.5, meaning 2018 delivered 5.5 years of average declared disaster work in one year (FEMA declarations, 2015 to 2025).
- Only 12 of 26 high-volume states have a year-to-year swing smaller than their own average year (FEMA county declarations, 2015 to 2025).
- South Carolina and Louisiana carry comparable declared disaster volume at 682 and 1,126 county declarations, but coefficients of variation of 0.64 and 1.45, so they require different business models (FEMA declarations, 2015 to 2025).
Questions this report answers
Which state has the steadiest restoration demand?
Washington, with a coefficient of variation of 0.46 across 288 county-level FEMA declarations from 2015 to 2025. Its mean is 26.2 declarations a year against a standard deviation of 12.1.
Which state has the most volatile demand?
Virginia, at a coefficient of variation of 1.53 in the FEMA declarations data. It averages 36.5 county declarations a year, but 2018 produced 200.
What is a coefficient of variation and why use it here?
It is the standard deviation divided by the mean, so it expresses year-to-year swing as a multiple of an average year. Because it is unitless, a small state and a large one can be compared directly, which a raw standard deviation does not allow.
What is the surge ratio?
The peak year’s county declaration count divided by the mean annual count. The highest in the FEMA data from 2015 to 2025 is Virginia at 5.5, meaning its worst year brought 5.5 years of average work.
Should I hire permanent crews or use subcontractors?
The volatility figure is the input. In a market with a coefficient of variation near 0.46, like Washington, a payroll sized to the average is chargeable most weeks. In a market near 1.53, like Virginia, a small permanent core plus pre-qualified subcontractors handles both the quiet years and the peak.
Does a high declaration count mean a volatile market?
No. South Carolina and Louisiana are both in the upper half by FEMA declaration volume, at 682 and 1,126 county declarations, yet their coefficients of variation are 0.64 and 1.45. Volume and predictability are separate measurements.
Can I reuse these tables?
Yes. The tables and derived figures are released under CC BY 4.0 with attribution to Remediation Insider. The underlying declarations data is public and available from FEMA.
How to cite
Remediation Insider. The Restoration Demand Volatility Index: Where Work Is Steady. https://remediationinsider.com/restoration-demand-volatility-index/ (retrieved 2 October 2026).
Data and tables in this report are released under CC BY 4.0. Attribution: Remediation Insider.
Sources
- Federal Emergency Management Agency. FEMA OpenFEMA Disaster Declarations Summaries, v2. Declarations dated 1 January 2015 or later, de-duplicated to 17,942 distinct county-level records and filtered to thirteen restoration-relevant incident types. Retrieved 2 October 2026.
- FEMA OpenFEMA Terms and Conditions.
- Companion analysis of declaration volume: the restoration demand index, which covers national counts and the volume ranking this report does not repeat.
- No survey, interview or site visit was conducted for this report. We retrieved the public declarations dataset and computed every derived figure from it.
This product uses the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s OpenFEMA API, but is not endorsed by FEMA. The Federal Government or FEMA cannot vouch for the data or analyses derived from these data after the data have been retrieved from the Agency’s website(s).