The community capacity to respond to earthquakes and tsunami threat in Air Tawar Barat Sub-District, Padang City, West Sumatra, Indonesia

Abstract

Air Tawar Barat Village, North Padang District, including the one of most vulnerable areas to the threat of earthquake and tsunami in Padang, West Sumatra Province, Indonesia. Earthquake disasters can result tsunami risk and unpredictable when it will occur. One of the efforts to reduce the risk of tsunami disasters is to increase the capacity and attitude of community preparedness against disasters. This study aims to identify the capacity of residents to face the tsunami disaster in Air Tawar Barat Village, Padang City, West Sumatra. The method is a quantitative-qualitative research through questionnaires assessing the capacity of communities and deep interviews related disaster knowledge to the subdistrict office, Kelompok Siaga Bencana (KSB) and local residents. Secondary datas obtained from the documentation in Subdistrict office and KSB, as well as literature review. The results of the study, could be concluded that the residents had good knowledge of disaster mitigation with the percentage of 64%, preparedness plans and actions had a good value with the percentage of 68.88%, perceptions and traditions of residents in preparedness attitudes (local culture and wisdom) well enough with the percentage of 50.67%, leadership and programs of the government and KSB was poor enough with the percentage of 45.33% and the role of information in the attitude of preparedness is very important with the percentage of 70%, then the average capacity level was still at low-level with the percentage of 56.87%. Based on this, the communties, KSB, local agency and the government need to have well integrated communication and coordination . It could be seen that residents likely lack of understanding about the duties and function of the KSB in taking efforts to minimize disaster risk besides this far the programs in Air Tawar Barat sub-district did not run smoothly and postponed due to limitations.