Disaster Field Guide¶
The reference wiki for the Rotary Club guide to autonomous disaster response.
When a disaster strikes, the first responders are never the ones who arrive later — they are the people already there. This guide turns a Rotary club into one of those first responders: prepared, autonomous, and able to act in the first hours with its own means, before the network of district, foundation and international support is activated.
Work-in-progress edition
This book is still being written. Its content is subject to change from one edition to the next. Several language versions coexist at different stages of completion — the version you read may not be the most recent one. This site always hosts the latest edition in every language.
Read it online¶
The full guide is available chapter by chapter in the The Guide section — searchable, with checklists, disaster cards and operational forms.
Available in 15 languages¶
The guide is fully translated and readable online in each of these languages:
🇫🇷 Français · 🇬🇧 English · 🇪🇸 Español · 🇵🇹 Português · 🇩🇪 Deutsch · 🇮🇹 Italiano · 🇯🇵 日本語 · 🇨🇳 中文 · 🇮🇳 हिन्दी · 🇸🇦 العربية · 🇧🇩 বাংলা · 🇮🇩 Indonesia · 🇰🇪 Kiswahili · 🇵🇭 Filipino · 🇹🇷 Türkçe
Pick your language in The Guide menu, or grab the PDF on the Download page.
Download the PDF¶
Prefer a printable file to take into the field? Every language version is available for free download on the Download page.
What this is — and isn't¶
This document is shared with the Rotary community in a spirit of continuous improvement. It does not commit Rotary International, The Rotary Foundation, or any of the cited Rotary Action Groups. Official figures (DRG ceiling, SHARE ratios, Global Grant amounts, etc.) may evolve — always verify on my.rotary.org before acting.
The disaster cards and operational forms are released under a Creative Commons BY-NC 4.0 licence: free to reproduce, photocopy, distribute and adapt within a club, district, Rotary Action Group, or associated humanitarian operation.
Your feedback shapes the next edition. Spotted a factual error, a procedural inaccuracy, a divergence from official doctrine? Write to g.bourgogne.rtn@gmail.com.
Global reach of the guide¶
The guide exists in 15 languages. The table below shows, for each language, the total number of speakers worldwide (native + second-language), the share of the world population (~8.1 billion) it represents, and an estimate of the number of Rotarians who live in the language's main area.
| Language | Speakers worldwide | % of world population | Rotarians (est.) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🇬🇧 English | ~1,500 M | ~18.5 % | ~500,000 |
| 🇨🇳 Chinese (Mandarin) | ~1,100 M | ~13.6 % | ~5,000 |
| 🇮🇳 Hindi | ~600 M | ~7.4 % | ~150,000 |
| 🇪🇸 Spanish | ~560 M | ~6.9 % | ~120,000 |
| 🇸🇦 Arabic | ~420 M | ~5.2 % | ~15,000 |
| 🇫🇷 French | ~280 M | ~3.5 % | ~60,000 |
| 🇧🇩 Bengali | ~270 M | ~3.3 % | ~10,000 |
| 🇵🇹 Portuguese | ~260 M | ~3.2 % | ~90,000 |
| 🇮🇩 Indonesian | ~200 M | ~2.5 % | ~3,000 |
| 🇩🇪 German | ~135 M | ~1.7 % | ~55,000 |
| 🇯🇵 Japanese | ~125 M | ~1.5 % | ~85,000 |
| 🇵🇭 Filipino | ~85 M | ~1.0 % | ~18,000 |
| 🇹🇷 Turkish | ~85 M | ~1.0 % | ~10,000 |
| 🇰🇪 Swahili | ~80 M | ~1.0 % | ~6,000 |
| 🇮🇹 Italian | ~65 M | ~0.8 % | ~40,000 |
| Combined | ~5,765 M speaker-counts | the large majority of humanity | ~1,150,000 Rotarians |
How to read these figures
Speakers are total-speaker counts (native + second language) from public linguistic sources; they overlap heavily — a bilingual person is counted under several languages — so the combined figure is a sum of speaker-counts, not a count of distinct people. Rotarian numbers are rough estimates, derived from Rotary's published regional distribution (~1.2–1.4 million members worldwide) mapped onto each language's main area; check country-level figures on my.rotary.org. The takeaway is qualitative: together, these 15 languages reach the large majority of the world's population and of the global Rotary network.