Volunteer Experiences in Search and Rescue and Humanitarian Aid Activities During the 2023 Kahramanmaraş, Türkiye, Earthquakes

The community-based preparedness approach to disaster risk reduction has gained importance within the field of disaster management. It emphasizes the important roles and responsibilities of community members in creating disaster management programs and systems, ensuring self-confidence, and reducing vulnerability during disasters. A significant portion of this resilience is made up of volunteers. In this study, the experiences of volunteers who went to disaster areas at different times to support search and rescue and humanitarian aid services were examined. Phenomenological design, which is a qualitative research design, was used in this study. The research group consists of volunteers working at Kocaeli University who went to the region after the February 6, 2023 earthquakes and stayed for more than 7 days. The data were obtained through semi-structured interviews. The data were grouped under 2 main themes, Humanitarian Aid and Search and Rescue, and 155 codes were produced. It is observed that the participants who went to the region for humanitarian aid focused on coordination problems, organizational weaknesses, and problems arising from people who were in the region for different purposes. Participants who went to the region for search and rescue reported that there were coordination and security problems after the two major earthquakes affecting 11 provinces, and that heavy traffic in the disaster region made transportation from the crisis coordination center to the field difficult. Suggestions based on participant experiences focused on raising awareness of volunteering, taking psychological first aid into consideration in volunteer training, and strengthening the search and rescue capacities of institutions.