Degree of Disaster Preparedness of Families

Abstract

Background:The family has a crucial role during disaster. It is a principal conduit for disaster behaviors and critical for its individual members' survival. Clason concluded that families have proved themselves not only essential reproductive units, but also as core social units enhancing its members' survival. Global policies on disaster risk reduction have highlighted individual and community responsibilities and roles in reducing risk and promoting coping capacity. A predominant gap in the literature is the need for evidence-informed strategies to overcome the identified challenges to family preparedness.Purpose: This study determined the degree of disaster preparedness of families on the dimensions of resources, disaster plan, knowledge on earthquake, typhoon and flood response, disaster skills, the attitudes of families towards disaster preparedness and the association of variables. Methods:The study utilized the quantitative descriptive-correlational design. The respondents consisted of 399 household heads in the city of Baguio, chosen through systematic, cluster sampling process. Data were gathered utilizing a group made questionnaire, and were treated using counts, means, ANOVA and Pearson correlation coefficient. Result:The findings revealed that from a scale of excellent, good, fair and poor, the degree of disaster preparedness of families is only "good" while families have "fairly positive" attitude towards disaster preparedness. There is a weak correlation between attitude and degree of preparedness. Conclusion:A. Families still cannot adequately respond to disaster, with several areas needed to be enhanced. a. Majority of the families do not find it necessary to prepare disaster supplies ahead of time. Several still don't see the need to do so. b. Families still need to come together to agree on what to do in case of disaster. c. Not all are ready to respond to earthquake. d. Families are knowledgeable enough on how to respond to typhoon and landslide. There is a need to enhance training on disaster response and basic life skills. B. Families have some negative perceptions related to disaster preparedness.C. The selected variables do not significantly influence degree of preparedness and attitudes toward disaster preparedness. D. Attitudes toward disaster do not influence much the degree of preparedness of families on disaster. In terms of disaster, they just have to do what can be done regardless of whether they have negative perception of things. Negative beliefs can be set aside in disaster situations.