​Reporting Your Damages

The importance of the initial local assessment of damages cannot be over emphasized. This process is essential in determining:

• What happened and how it has affected individuals and communities
• How residential, business, and infrastructure property has been affected
• Which areas were hardest hit
• Which situations must be given response priority
• What types of assistance are needed (e.g., local, state, or federal)

Accurate and timely damage reporting is crucial to successfully requesting and receiving federal assistance in the form of either low-interest loans or grants to help Pennsylvania’s citizens, businesses, and infrastructure recover from a disaster.

Who To Report Damages To

The recovery process begins with the identification of damages at the local level and the expeditious reporting of those damages within the emergency management channels:

• Individuals and businesses report property damages to the community’s emergency management coordinator
• Elected officials report municipal property and infrastructure damages to the community’s emergency management coordinator
• Community emergency management coordinators report damages to residential, business and municipal property and infrastructure within their community to the county emergency management coordinator

County emergency management coordinators report overall damages to residential, business, and municipal property and infrastructure within their county to PEMA using the Initial Damage Reporter function of the automated Pennsylvania Emergency Information Reporting System (PEIRS).

PEMA analyzes the damage information it receives from the county/counties to determine if the event warrants requesting assistance from either FEMA or the SBA.

Commonwealth Damage Reporter

The Commonwealth Damage R​eporter​ is an interactive web-based system that provides a systematic and accurate process of assessing damages and reporting them to federal standards and guidelines.

This system can be accessed via a web browser and on any mobile device for ease of field use. Once the damage is rapidly collected at the municipal level, county and state emergency management can quickly analyze the data to determine the scope of damage to a specific area, county, or the state.

Commonwealth Damage Reporter Training Modules

​Following a disaster, a systematic and accurate process of assessing damages and reporting them according to federal standards and guidelines is extremely important to ensure that proper disaster assistance is secured. These training videos provide an overview on how to utilize the Commonwealth Damage Reporter in reporting your damages to PEMA. 

Emergency management coordinators and elected officials can use the following links to access forms and information to assess and document damages within their community or county:

• SBA Consolidated Damage Survey Forms (XLS) are used to capture individual residential and business damage information.
• Individual Assistance Municipality-County IDR Worksheet (PDF) is used to consolidate residential and business damage information for a municipality or county.
• DAP-19 Local Damage Assessment Form (PDF) is used to capture information identifying damaged infrastructure within a municipality.
• DAP-17 Preliminary Damage Assessment – Consolidated for County (PDF) is used to consolidate infrastructure damages by municipality within a county.
• Individual Assistance PDA Worksheet (PDF) is used to record the results of the joint FEMA/SBA Preliminary Damage Assessment.
• Applicant Responsibilities in Preliminary Damage Assessment (PDF) contains guidance for the municipality pertaining to the conduct of a joint Preliminary Damage Assessment.
• County Responsibilities in Preliminary Damage Assessment contains guidance for the county pertaining to the conduct of a joint Preliminary Damage Assessment.