Introduction : It is well known that the normal life is disturbed by disaster which involves the high level adaptation of society. There are a lot of disasters such as earthquake and flood in Iran. The health staff especially nurses' knowledge about facing these disasters is very important. To determine the nursing knowledge about encountering with disasters, the current study was undertaken.

  Methods: This was a descriptive- analytical study which was carried out in 2004 at Shaheed Beheshti hospital in Bandar Anzali.By available sampling fifty nurses and nurses' aids were asked to answer to a questionnaire.

  Results: statistical analysis was performed by SPSS. Most of subjects have been working for more than 15 years, and 78% of them were nurses .Related to parficipating the educational courses in past 3 years , only 14% of them had passed the cerebral cardio plomonary resuscitaion course and no one had passed an educational program for transporting a casualty ,bleeding control, dressing, bandage, burning, poisoning, fire- fighting and helping after earthquake and flood .Most of them (65%) considered the education level about mentioned cases in university as moderate. Few subjects (11/1%) were members of a disaster committee and have participated in an educational program. None of them was the member of Red- Cross. Most of them (92%) agreed with formation of a resuscitation team in hospitals. Most of them (62%) have experienced a disaster in their work time and they considered their performance (43/5%) as moderate and 34% as weak in that time. Most of them agreed with implementing a citizen education program. Most of them (83%) didn’t consider the encountering equipments with earthquake and flood as enough. The equipments (58%), the management before disaster (50/5%), the education before disaster (42%), and the management after disaster were the most important factors for encounter with disaster.

  Discussion: Hospital managers should educate the staff about emergencies and first aids along with getting necessary information concerning crisis management through compiling educational codified programs so that they not only cause their skills increasing in different fields of work but also their active participation along with enough self- confidence at the time of disaster will be increased .