Preparedness for Earthquake: Knowledge and Behavior

This research; is a cross-sectional survey conducted on individuals aged 18 years and over to determine the level of earthquake information and the extent to which their information is transformed into practice for individuals living in one of the cities located in the first- degree earthquake hazard zone. In the study, although the participants' knowledge point averages (82.17 ± 17.24) were quite high, the average behavior scores (36.27 ± 23.83) were found to be low. It was found that there was no significant relationship between the participants' knowledge scores and demographic characteristics, but the behavior average scores of the males were found to be meaningfully significantly higher when man compared to women, married compared to single, homeowners compared to non-homeowners, people with experience of devastating earthquake compared to those who were not experienced and owing to earthquake, people that lost their relatives in earthquake compared to those who did’t loose (p≤0.05). Very few (33.0%) of those who knew that they needed an earthquake bag (92.8%) were found to have an earthquake bag at home. It was also found that very few (19.3%) of those, who knew they had to have fire extinguishers, had fire extinguishers at home. It was determined that the rate of participants' who felt as if they were ready for earthquake (6.2%) was very low. As a result; it was found out that the average of earthquake knowledge score of the individuals was high but the average of behavior score was low. In line with this result, we propose to give practical trainings to transform their information about earthquake into behavior.