FEMA chief: US not ready to help children in disasters

Most of the country is poorly prepared to help children if disaster strikes, Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Craig Fugate told a Senate committee Tuesday. "We've historically looked at special populations as an afterthought," Fugate said. "Children are not small adults." Mark Shriver, the chairman of the National Commission on Children and Disasters and managing director of advocacy group Save the Children, was more pointed: "Children are 25 percent of the population," he said, "but we've spent more time, energy and money on pets than we have on kids. That's absolutely outrageous." And Irwin Redlener, the president of the Children's Health Fund, said that FEMA was too often "flailing around" on certain children's disaster issues.