FACTORS INFLUENCING FIRE DISASTER MANAGEMENT PREPAREDNESS: A CASE OF PRIMARY SCHOOLS IN MAKUENI COUNTY, KENYA

The study sought to establish the factors influencing fire disaster preparedness in primary schools in Makueni County in Kenya. Using multiple regression analysis, the findings showed that fire safety policy knowledge had a beta (), fire safety guidelines implementation practices  and fire safety resources provision. This infers that fire safety support resources provision affects fire disaster management preparedness in primary schools to a great extent followed by safety policy knowledge while fire safety guidelines implementation had the least effect. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) indicated a significance value of 0.009 which is less than 0.05 thus the model was significant in predicting how policy knowledge, guidelines implementation practices and support resources provision influence fire disaster management preparedness in primary schools. A paired t-test revealed that there was no significant difference in the means of fire disaster preparedness in the public and private primary schools. Therefore, the study recommends more emphasis should be put on training of school stakeholders on fire disaster preparedness and provision of fire safety support resources for combating fire disasters in primary schools.