Three Alaska disaster declarations have no Federal Register notice

Three federal disaster declarations covering Alaska have never been published in the Federal Register: the major disaster for the Native Village of Kipnuk in May, the one for the Matanuska-Susitna Borough in April, and the Mukluk Fire declaration in August. Federal rules say they should be.

The published notice is the government's official account of a disaster. It names the areas covered, the programs authorized, the federal share of the cost, and the incident period, the window of time damage has to fall inside to be paid for. The regulation says designations of areas and eligible assistance "shall be published in the Federal Register."

FEMA has not published a declaration notice since May 6. In the four months since, the agency has filed 78 notices in the Federal Register, all of them flood maps, paperwork clearances or grant announcements. By FEMA's own count, 85 disaster declarations have been issued in that span, 34 of them major disasters.

The Mat-Su case is different from the other two, because the notice exists. FEMA's website carries a document dated April 7, the day the president signed the declaration. It is a finished Federal Register notice, with the billing code, the docket numbers, the designation of the borough for public assistance at a 75 percent federal share, the coordinating officer and the assistance catalogue numbers. It is signed by Karen S. Evans, the senior official performing the duties of administrator. It has been sitting there for five months.

For Kipnuk and the Mukluk Fire, FEMA's own pages state the absence. Under the heading for disaster notices, both read: "There are no notices to show."

Publication has been falling off for years. The Federal Register carried 273 declaration notices in 2023 and 380 in 2024, spread through nearly every month. In 2025 they appeared on two days. In 2026 they have appeared on one, when FEMA filed 68 at once covering declarations going back to September 2023, a median of 145 days late. The median lag in 2024 was 65 days, and 59 notices that year ran within a month.

The Small Business Administration, which issues its own notice for the same presidential declarations, has kept publishing on time. Its Alaska notices have run a week to three weeks behind the declarations. Its June 8 notice is now the only Federal Register record that the Kipnuk disaster exists at all, carrying the incident period, the loan deadlines and the interest rate.

Nothing in the records reviewed shows that anyone has been denied assistance or missed a deadline because a notice went unpublished. FEMA has not been asked why publication stopped, whether another catch-up is planned, or what becomes of a notice after it is signed. Its catch-up filings do not mention the delay or give a reason.