(ABC 6 News) – Natural disasters are a common occurrence across the United States, but evidence suggests those disasters are becoming more and more frequent, particularly flooding.

According to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, in 2000, there were only two flooding events nationwide that qualified as disaster declarations.

This year, already, there’s been 66.

Minnesota was one of many states that saw disaster level flooding.

Places like Freeborn County saw roads and bridges washed out, and plenty of other damage when heavy rains hit the state in late spring and early summer.

“We had several collapsed basements,” said the county’s emergency management director, Rich Hall. “We had about 158 homes that had damage. That damage could have been anywhere from six inches of water all the way to full basements and onto the main floor.”

It was enough to warrant FEMA stepping in alongside the state to provide assistance.

The organization has been working the last few months to help individuals and counties recover, but the process takes a long time.

And, there are other emergencies to cover.

“We’re stretched thin as an agency in terms of personnel,” said federal coordinating officer John Boyle.

That’s why, months after the original floods, FEMA began advertising it was hiring workers in southern Minnesota to help the recovery process, starting with a job fair Tuesday.

Boyle said having locals help with recovery makes the process go faster, as locals are more easily able to interact with those who need help.

“If you come up here from Florida, or I come from Chicago and I’m in Minnesota, I need to understand the people, the community,” he said. “And people from here help us do that.”

New employees can expect to be hired on temporarily, for a period of 120 days, but Boyle says there are opportunities for people to continue working for the agency across the country, if that’s something they might be interested in.

The agency will still be hiring even after the job fair. Interested applicants can visit usajobs.gov and search for jobs in Minnesota with FEMA.

These types of disasters are becoming more frequent.

Part of the reason is a changing climate, according to the DNR’s senior climatologist Kenneth Blumenfeld.

He says this year’s rainfall is just a small part of a greater pattern.

“If you stand far back enough, you see that that’s actually part of this longer term trend that’s about 50-60 or so years in the making where we’ve just been getting more precipitation,” he said.

It doesn’t end there.

Blumenfeld says things like population growth play a part as well, as people expand in to areas that are more likely to experience things like heavier rain.

Of course, now, Minnesota is in the middle of a drought, which in some ways the earlier rains may have helped.

“We’d be looking at a lot more severe drought,” said Hall. “We’d have a lot worse crops for the farms, Ag would really be hurting.”

FEMA is also still accepting applications for individual assistance in certain counties from this summer’s floods until October 27. You can find more information here.