The Impact of Disaster Education on Household Preparedness for Hurricane Hugo

This article examines the impact of disaster education on hurricane preparedness among residents in Charleston, South Carolina. The article examines: (1) the impact of participation in disaster education programs generally; (2) the impact of hurricane experience as a type of education; and (3) the impact of participation in earthquake specific education programs to determine whether there is any transference of knowledge across agent types. Two indices of preparedness are used: household planning activities and adaptive response activities. It was found that participation in some type of disaster education program is strongly related to the preparedness measures. Hurricane experience has some minimal effect on adaptive response but not on household planning. Participation in the earthquake specific education programs is not a significant predictor when controlling for other variables.