How prepared is your state for keeping children safe during a crisis?

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Tuesday, September 2, 2014
(SaveTheChildren.org)
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When a disaster strikes where you live, is your state prepared to keep your children safe? International charity and child's rights organization, Save the Children, has created an interactive map to promote awareness of the lack of safety measures in place for U.S. children during a crisis.

Generating a report card for each state, Save the Children weighed each state based on four criteria, granting either a "satisfactory" or "unsatisfactory" mark. The four criteria measured whether each state had a plan or provision in place to meet the following needs:




Save the Children built the map and state report cards as a push for their online petition to rectify the lack of these preparedness measures. By signing the petition, users are granted full access to the National Report Card on Protecting Children in Disasters, including other interesting data finds.

According to Save the Children's data, approximately 54% of U.S. families have been affected by some type of disaster including hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, flooding, fires and school shootings. Save the Children also reports that parents are far more concerned about school shootings than they are natural disasters.

The following states passed all four criteria:

Alabama
Alaska
Arkansas
California
Colorado
Connecticut
Hawaii
Illinois
Kentucky
Lousiana
Maryland
Massachusetts
Mississippi
Nebraska
New Hampshire
New Jersey
New Mexico
New York
North Carolina
Oklahoma
Rhode Island
Tennessee
Texas
Utah
Vermont
Washington
West Virginia
Wisconsin
Wyoming

Any state not listed above was missing one or more of Save The Children's criteria for child preparedness. Check out the map here to find which states didn't pass.

How well did your state do? Are you concerned at all? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.