Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Disaster Vulnerability And Evacuation Readiness: Coastal Mobile Home Residents In Florida, Margarethe Kusenbach, Jason Simms, Graham Tobin

Jason L Simms

This article examines disaster preparedness in a highly vulnerable population, mobile home park residents in hurricane-prone areas. The vulnerabilities of this population mandate evacuation as the only viable disaster response strategy, but this does not always happen. In order to explore evacuation decision making, interviews were conducted with 75 mobile home park residents in Ruskin, Florida. Descriptive results build on a conceptualization of physical, structural, socio-economic, and ‘‘residual’’ disaster vulner- ability; the latter is defined as a combination of experiences, perceptions, and preparations that inhibit the willingness and abilities of respondents to protect themselves. While residents generally prepared for disasters, …