Extreme heat kills more Americans each year than hurricanes, floods, and tornadoes combined. In 2024 alone, heat-related deaths reached 2,394 — nearly double the toll recorded in 1999. Yet as a heat dome over the eastern two-thirds of the United States placed more than 200 million Americans under heat alerts this July 4 weekend, federal emergency law still does not have a mechanism to declare extreme heat a major disaster.
No President has ever issued a major disaster declaration solely for extreme heat under the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act. The law that governs when FEMA can deploy its full resources was designed around sudden, property-damaging events — hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, earthquakes. Extreme heat kills people, not buildings. And because the Stafford Act defines "damage" in terms of structural harm, the deaths do not count in the same way.
