DETERMINANTS OF EVACUATION RESPONSE TO CYCLONE WARNING IN COASTAL AREAS OF BANGLADESH: A COMPARATIVE STUDY (original) (raw)

2014, Keywords: Cyclone Sidr, Cyclone Warning, Evacuation Orders, Cyclone Shelters, Bangladesh

"The objective of this paper is to identify the causes of people’s noncompliance with evacuation initiatives during cyclone sidr and comparing with previous other studies to find out common responsible factors for non-evacuation. Besides, the role of selected socio-economic and demographic variables on human evacuation response behaviour to cyclone warning will also be explored. A total 331 out of 792households living in three villages devastated by cyclone Sidr were selected. A questionnaire survey was conducted at household level following simple random sampling procedure. Both descriptive and inferential statistics are used to analyze data. The present study finds that more than 90 percent of respondents had received cyclone warning and nearly 41 percent had evacuated in formal and informal cyclone shelters. However, only 13.6 percent had formally evacuated to the designated cyclone shelters. Following of evacuation order significantly increased in 2007 (sidr) than 1970 (the great Bhola) and 1991 (Gorky) cyclones. Even though Bangladesh has made significant progress in cyclone warning dissemination, there still some critical deficiencies in evacuation response. Reasons are broadly cyclone shelter related, warning message related and respondent’s perception related. Such reasons are in fact consistent with previous studies on Sidr, Gorky and the Great Bhola cyclones. Besides, several factors such as location, age, gender, education, primary occupation, distance from cyclone shelter and access to road and cyclone shelter play vital roles for evacuation decisions. Based on the findings, the present study recommend improved cyclone early warning, and monitoring how far warning messages are transmitted to local people, utilization of existing shelter and construction small denser shelter, assurance of post-cyclone security, and awareness creation through education campaign by targeting vulnerable groups and places for disaster risk reduction. Keywords: Cyclone Sidr, Cyclone War"