The role of education in disaster mitigation adjustment

ABSTRACT

A representative national (USA) sample of local emergency management agency (LEMA) coordinators (N=178) completed a mail-questionnaire which sought to indentify their mitigation actrivities and to determine if mitigation strategies vary by eight experience variable education, training background, major emergency experiencedisaster, year worked as LEMA coordinador, years of EMS esperience.In descending order of reference, the co-odinators utilise the following mitigation strategies disseminate response information throught the schools and the media seek zoning law changes, urge citizens to purchase insure, attempt building code change. The only variable observed to be associated with mitigation strategy decisions was education, college graduates being more likely to adopt any of the seven activities than non-graduates. Chi-square tests utilised. The response rate was 53 per cent (AU)