Natural Disasters

Just to put things in context, in the past 20 years in the US:

1989 San Francisco earthquake kills 68

1998 Northeastern US Ice Storm kills 35, many people without power for weeks

2001 9/11, simultaneous terrorist attacks on DC and NYC kill 2993

2005 New Orleans Hurricane Katrina kills 1836

In the past 20 years in Southeast Asia:

1989 Bangladesh, massive tornado kills 1,300

1991 Bangladesh, flooding kills 139,000

1993 India, Earthquake kills 22,000

1998 Papua New Guinea, tsunami kills 2,000

1999 India, ‘Super Cyclone’ kills 9,885

2001 India, Earthquake kills 20,000

2004 Throughout Southeast Asia, tsunami kills 229,866

2007 Bangladesh, Cyclone Sidr kills 3,500

2008 Burma, Cyclone Nargis kills at least 100,000 (numbers still coming in)

 

These numbers are incomprehensible. To anyone, I would think. I can comprehend 35 dead. That’s a tragedy, a human, terrifying tragedy. But 100 times that? 3,000 times that? The numbers lose their meaning. On Monday, there were 100,000 more people alive on the planet than there are today. How can this be?