We think Hurricane Katrina was a disaster and to us, it was.

A year ago, today, an earthquake rocked (to borrow a much-used cliche) the Sichuan province, killing 69, 000 people.  Three zeros after that 69.  As in thousand.  Sixty-nine thousand.

So imagine the current student bodies (approximately) of Duke University and the University of Michigan disappearing.  You'd still have to add another 15,000 people to equal the number dead in that earthquake.  

It killed so many people that it's no longer considered an earthquake.  It's an Earthquake.

So the big question is this:

How big a leap did American society have to take that earthquakes, hurricanes, cyclones and other natural disasters seem to be considered more...inconveniences than legitimate life-changing events (with obvious exceptions)?

When Florida declares that a storm has such potentially dangerous after-effects that the government evacuates the area , we always hear of people staying in their houses to wait out the storm.  How serious are earthquakes in Los Angeles?  Or thunderstorms and floods in the DC area.

I remember when I was at school in Harrisonburg four or five years ago and we caught the tail end of a nasty tropical storm.  My girlfriend at the time and I played in the rain.  It was cool.  Some kid felt the same way and went canoeing in a lake, but met his match and drowned.  Except for that poor young man, it wasn't a big deal.

So how far do the less advanced countries of the world have to come technologically and socially that natural disasters is just a figure of speech?  Because in China and other less-developed countries, these events that we think of more as annoyances really are disasters.

What has to happen for that to stop?