How it works
You type in one US street address. In a few seconds you get back a $19 PDF that tells you the property's overall natural-disaster risk rating, where it ranks against the rest of the country, and a rating for every one of the 18 hazards FEMA tracks. Here is exactly what happens between the two, and what the number does and does not mean.
Your address goes to the US Census Bureau geocoder, which converts it into a precise latitude and longitude. That is a point on the map, not a ZIP-code guess, so we can look up the right neighborhood rather than a whole city's average.
With the coordinates, we query FEMA's National Risk Index for the census tract your home sits in. From it we read three things: the overall composite risk rating, the national percentile that puts that rating in context, and the individual rating for each hazard, from wildfire and flood to earthquake, hurricane, tornado, heat and cold.
We assemble it into one report you can read in a minute: the headline rating and percentile up top, the hazards that rate highest at this location pulled to the front, then the full 18-hazard table, a plain-English note on what the index actually measures, and what to do about the hazards that stand out. It arrives by email in seconds, with no account to create.
Being straight about the data: FEMA's National Risk Index is an expected annual loss index, not a forecast. It blends how often a hazard happens, how much is in harm's way, how vulnerable the community is, and how well it can recover. So a low-population area can rate "Relatively Low" even where a hazard is genuinely present, because there is simply less to lose. The report shows every hazard's own rating so you see the parts, not just the headline.
This is a plain-English read of FEMA's own model for one address. It is tract-level, so it describes the area your home is in rather than certifying your individual lot. It is not an official disaster determination, not a flood-zone certificate, and not affiliated with FEMA. It is a fast, honest starting point to take to your insurer or realtor, or to size up a place before you move.
Reviewed 1 July 2026.
