Assessing College Students and Culture of Preparedness for Disasters

Government reports following Hurricane Katrina and the 9-11 Terrorist attack call for the development of a Culture of Preparedness. The American Red Cross recommends that individual citizen preparedness center primarily on having a disaster plan including: having a discussion with family to discuss how to prepare for a disaster; picking two places to meet and having everyone know the address and phone number of those places; asking an out-of-state friend to be the "family contact”; discussing what to do in an evacuation, including planning how to take care of pets and having a disaster kit. For many young adults, the college experience is the first time they make independent decisions. The study reported here will discuss the level of individual preparedness on a sample of 1515 college students who responded to a fall 2006 Internet survey on health knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors. The study evaluated the level of preparedness of these college students in view of the Red Cross recommendations for disaster planning. The presentation will further discuss variables correlated with better preparedness as well as students' experience with disasters. For example, of the 1515 students, 12% have been evacuated from their home and 26% have had their residence damaged by a fire, storm, flood or other disaster.