Well, the wildest drought in decades is now gripping more than half the country. 55% of the u.s. Was in a moderate to extreme drought at the end of june. Last time that happened was in 1958 when 58% was covered in drought. On top of that, 80% of the u.s. Is abnormally dry. And it's really, really hot. 12 months from july, july 2007 to june 2012, the hottest on record. And that could mean more wildfires and emergency situations, and also it's the beginning of hurricane season. Are you prepared? All of this brings us to talk about what fema is doing. And the fema director is with us this morning. Let's start with the wildfires, if we can. What do you do at this point? They are burning so much. 

Well, you know, we talk about wildfires. You get certain conditions where in many cases the only thing you can do is evacuate people, and you hope you get better conditions and it rains. But really these fires are a condition of the drought. Until the drought gets better, wildfires will be present throughout the west. 

And then to flash flooding. 

Because of all of the cover being burnt off. When we do get rains, they will probably also run the risk of increased flash flooding. 

How about hurricane season? We are a month in. 

We are still early in the hurricane season. We already had a couple of named storms. But the peak is usually the latter part of august, september, and october. We have a long way to go, and we need to keep our guard up and pay attention. 

Is there any way to predict the number of storms? I know those predictions aren't always accurate. Predict. 

There's a lot of people that my prediction is you ought to be ready for the one that hits your community. And nobody can tell you whether or not that will happen. So just get ready and be prepared. 

Some of the advice and getting ready part is sort of what you brought with us, the props you brought. Hold them up and show everybody. You now are using flat stanley and his friend, flat stella, to talk about the message of getting ready. And this is for the kids. 

This is for the kids. We talk about disasters. It's kind of a scary subject. 

Yeah, it is. 

One of the lessons from katrina was we don't do a good job making sure we are focused on children and their needs and issues. So kind of a happenstance, my nephew conner sent me his flat stanley. And people were paying attention to it. And i thought maybe this would be a different way to communicate with children about something that can be real scary but things they need to know. So we partnered with the flat stanley organization, and we now have our two newest employees, flat stanley and flat stella. 

They travel well. 

Yes, they travel well. And they are going to help tell the story in the words of a child to help take away some of the fear so they are better prepared and understand things that are going on. 

Three ways that people should be prepared. What are they? 

Have a plan. Probably the biggest part is make sure you have good family communication plan as we saw with the power outages. Make sure you can let people know if you're ok. Know an evacuation route. Also for the wildfires. Be ready to go. And the third thing is, sit down with the kids and make sure they know what the plan is in case their school, they are not at home, you're not around when something happens. The first couple of hours are always the most critical. So have a good plan. 

And most terrifying when you can't reach people. Craig fugate, nice to have you. I like flat stella. I have never seen her before. ...