Emergency Preparedness: Knowledge and Perceptions of Latin American Immigrants

Low-income Latinos are often at particular risk following a disaster since they lack access to financial and material resources to recover their losses and cushion the impact of the disaster. Studies of earthquakes in California suggest that poor Latinos, undocumented immigrants, and monolingual ethnic groups are among the groups that encounter the most problems in acquiring resources and recovering. Low-wage Latinos with fragile homes and livelihoods had limited access to post-disaster resources following Hurricane Andrew. This chapter describes the level of public emergency knowledge and perceptions of risks among a group of Latin American immigrants, and their preferred and actual sources of emergency preparedness information (including warning signals). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: chapter)