Disaster Management and Disaster Preparedness: Examples of Practices in California and Turkey

Disaster is the result of natural and human-induced events that community can’t be able to overcome by their own facilities and that causes economic and social losses by interrupting or stopping the social life. Nowadays, causes of the transformation of the disasters to catastrophes appear to be the results of incorrect risk management methods. Most effective way of preventing the losses resulting from disasters is applying a good disaster plan. In order to ensure this, it’s necessary to increase the awareness of community members about the disasters and on which task they will be responsible in case of disaster. In this study, practices in the California State are examined as a sample of disaster preparedness and disaster management applications due to its similarity to our country because of its location in the area that has high probability rate of natural and technological disasters and on the major fault outlines. Also results and recommendations achieved in this area are given as illustrating best practices in our country in terms of raising awareness.