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Restoration Demand Index 2026: 16,135 County Events
The short answer
Restoration demand is measurable from the federal disaster record: declarations produced 16,135 distinct county-level restoration events across the United States between 2015 and 2025. Texas (1,219), Florida (1,183) and Kentucky (1,152) lead the count. Hurricanes and severe storms drive 60% of it.
Key takeaways
- Kentucky ranks third nationally with 1,152 events, ahead of Louisiana, Georgia and California. Inland flooding and winter storms, not coastal hurricanes, put it there.
- 2024 was the heaviest year on record in this dataset at 2,362 events.
- Volatility matters more than volume for staffing. Washington varies least (coefficient of variation 0.46); Virginia varies most (1.53).
- Hurricane alone accounts for 32.6% of all events.
Every published estimate of restoration industry demand traces back to a market-research subscription. This one does not. It is built from the federal disaster declaration record, which is free, public, and updated continuously. The method is written out below so anyone can reproduce or challenge it.
What we counted
A single hurricane can be declared across dozens of counties. For a restoration contractor, that is dozens of separate markets with separate crews and separate jobs, not one event. So the unit here is the county-level declaration: a distinct combination of disaster number, state, and designated area.
How we counted. Source: FEMA OpenFEMA DisasterDeclarationsSummaries, version 2, retrieved 23 September 2026; latest declaration in the pull dated 15 September 2026. We pulled every declaration dated 2015-01-01 or later, then filtered to the thirteen incident types that generate property restoration work and de-duplicated on disaster number, state, place code and designated area. Fire counts include wildfire declarations, which generate smoke and contents work well beyond the burn perimeter. Figures below cover 2015 through 2025. 2026 is excluded from all trend figures because it is a partial year and because a single January winter-storm system accounts for roughly two thirds of its count so far, which would misrepresent one correlated event as a rising baseline.
Where the work is: top 20 states
# State Events 2015-2025 Mean per year Volatility (CV) Peak year 1 Texas 1,219 111 1.23 2021 2 Florida 1,183 108 0.94 2024 3 Kentucky 1,152 105 1.11 2025 4 Louisiana 1,126 102 1.45 2020 5 Georgia 1,048 95 1.33 2017 6 North Carolina 911 83 0.91 2024 7 Puerto Rico 727 66 1.17 2017 8 South Carolina 682 62 0.64 2024 9 Oklahoma 587 53 0.75 2021 10 Mississippi 565 51 1.29 2021 11 California 556 51 1.14 2023 12 Missouri 526 48 0.79 2016 13 Tennessee 495 45 0.81 2025 14 Kansas 473 43 0.83 2019 15 Alabama 435 40 1.17 2020 16 Virginia 401 36 1.53 2018 17 Arkansas 396 36 1.04 2025 18 Nebraska 348 32 0.84 2019 19 Iowa 298 27 0.91 2019 20 Washington 288 26 0.46 2015 Distinct county-level declarations for restoration-relevant incident types. Source: FEMA OpenFEMA DisasterDeclarationsSummaries v2, retrieved 23 September 2026. The surprise is Kentucky. It has no coastline, and it still produced 1,152 county-level events, third behind Texas and Florida and ahead of Louisiana. Its peak was 2025. Repeated inland flooding and winter storm systems across a state with 120 counties produce a declaration count that rivals the hurricane coast.
What kind of work it is
Incident type Events Share Hurricane 5,252 32.6% Severe Storm 4,506 27.9% Flood 2,478 15.4% Severe Ice Storm 1,068 6.6% Tropical Storm 1,059 6.6% Fire 873 5.4% Snowstorm 261 1.6% Tornado 240 1.5% Coastal Storm 176 1.1% Winter Storm 149 0.9% Mud/Landslide 35 0.2% Typhoon 28 0.2% Dam/Levee Break 10 0.1% 2015-2025. Source: FEMA OpenFEMA, retrieved 23 September 2026. Water is the trade. Hurricane, severe storm and flood together account for 76% of all events. Fire is 5.4% by declaration count, which understates its revenue share because fire jobs carry contents, odour and reconstruction scope that a flood job often does not.
The number that should drive your staffing plan
Total volume tells you where the work is. It does not tell you whether you can keep a crew busy. For that, the useful measure is the coefficient of variation: the year-to-year standard deviation divided by the mean. A low number means a predictable annual baseline. A high number means the work arrives in surges.
Steadiest demand (states with 150+ events)
State Events Mean per year CV Washington 288 26 0.46 South Carolina 682 62 0.64 Oklahoma 587 53 0.75 Missouri 526 48 0.79 Tennessee 495 45 0.81 Kansas 473 43 0.83 Lower CV means a more predictable annual baseline. Source: FEMA OpenFEMA, retrieved 23 September 2026. Most surge-driven demand
State Events Mean per year CV Virginia 401 36 1.53 South Dakota 254 23 1.47 Louisiana 1,126 102 1.45 Georgia 1,048 95 1.33 Mississippi 565 51 1.29 Texas 1,219 111 1.23 Higher CV means demand arrives in surges. Source: FEMA OpenFEMA, retrieved 23 September 2026. Washington and Virginia are the two ends of this. Washington averages 26 events a year with a CV of 0.46, which is a book of work you can hire permanent technicians against. Virginia averages 36 with a CV of 1.53: in a quiet year the fixed cost of an idle crew is the thing that kills you, and in a declaration year you cannot staff it alone. Those are different businesses, and they justify different decisions about permanent headcount, equipment ownership versus rental, and reciprocal agreements with out-of-state firms.
What this dataset does not tell you
- It counts declarations, not jobs. A federal declaration requires damage beyond state and local capacity. The burst supply line in an unaffected county never appears here, and that work is a large share of the trade.
- It does not measure dollars. Event counts say nothing about severity or job value.
- County counts favour states with many counties. Kentucky has 120 and Texas has 254; Delaware has three. Read the table as declared-area breadth, not damage intensity.
- Declaration practice varies. Whether a state requests federal assistance is a political and fiscal decision as well as a meteorological one.
We are publishing the limits because the alternative, which is what most industry statistics do, is to present a single number with no method attached. If you find an error in this, tell us and we will correct it in public.
Sources
- Federal Emergency Management Agency, OpenFEMA Disaster Declarations Summaries, v2. Declarations dated 2015-01-01 through 15 September 2026. Retrieved 23 September 2026.
- Federal Emergency Management Agency, OpenFEMA Terms and Conditions.
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).