I'm not sure financial resources are going to make a dent in the emotional damage a disaster of this magnitude is going to cause, even if it helps get the country on its feet a little quicker.

I told her she needed to unpack her cis privilege. Hee.

Heh.

they didn't have another one until Hurricane David when I was in college.

well, you're not going to flood your own command center, right?

But it does seem like there have been much bigger disasters in the last ten years than there were in the first twenty (1961 to 1981) that I was growing up.

I suspect there are several things going on. There's the usual culprit, more media. Camille got five (or maybe ten) minutes on the national evening news, plus a minute or two on the local radio station's hourly news and a story (or three) in the local daily paper. Katrina got wall-to-wall, 24-7 coverage on the Internet, and if you wanted, you could read the NOLA local paper and listen to the NOLA local radio stations (at least, to the extent that they were still running).

Those local media might have given a little more play to Camille if there was a local angle -- say, the mayor's son lived in Biloxi at the time. Now, there's always a local angle. Just among us Buffistas, we have current residents of NOLA, former residents, and people who went to school there. And the same is true of most of America.

The reaction seems to be different. Katrina is the first time I can think of a "you're on your own" reaction to a disaster -- and that reaction alone is newsworthy. Conversely, think of the massive collections of money right after the Haiti quake last year.

And, as a kid, you aren't likely to pay attention. How many kids in our generation really paid attention to current events unless school required it? How many adults saw reading the paper or watching the TV news as practically a civic duty?

But did you notice that the hurricane was named after you??????

That hurricane had my name on it!

well, you're not going to flood your own command center, right?

Well, I might. 'Cuz I'm capricious that way.

In the last ten years though we've had: 9/11, Indonesian tsunami, Katrina, Haiti, major quake in Chile, two major quakes in Japan...

I guess I should go look this up on Wikipedia instead of pulling it out of my butt.

I'm so sorry Maria.

Hayden, I hope he gets home safely.

The reaction seems to be different. Katrina is the first time I can think of a "you're on your own" reaction to a disaster -- and that reaction alone is newsworthy.

Worse than "you're on your own." It sorta felt like (some) people were saying, "well it's your own damn fault" and from (fewer people) "good riddance to bad rubbish."

I guess I should go look this up on Wikipedia instead of pulling it out of my butt.

Wikipedia is in Hec's butt...pass it on.

I'm not sure financial resources are going to make a dent in the emotional damage a disaster of this magnitude is going to cause, even if it helps get the country on its feet a little quicker.

Yeah, my coworker was just asking who she should give to. I was like, I don't know. Everyone? I mean, who is cleaning up the bodies washing up on beaches? I still can't let myself fully comprehend it.

Katrina is a big reason why I can't handle looking at pictures or video of what's going on right now.

The loss of life from what happened in Chernobyl in my opinion is sometimes underestimated. Early theoretical projections were based on estimates of the consequences of low level radiation that are no longer accepted. Some of the most cited studies that give empirical results well below those numbers managed to not count a large number of people. So I'l be glad if it is not that bad in Japan. For us in the U.S. , there is little to worry about. Radiation from Japan should hit Washington Coast where I live around the 21st, but most of the radioactive particles will drop into the ocean between Japan and here so, as Ginger noted, probably a really tiny increased risk by the time it gets here. The one remaining coal plant in our state which is near me is more of a health risk to our state, and probably over its life cycle is responsible for more radiation than your average nuclear power plant. It is certainly responsible for exposing me personally to more radiation than all the accidents in Japan will be.

To move from garcentricity, it will also be diluted enough in the ocean not to be noticeable to fish and the rest of the world too. Area immediately off coast of Japan, I don't know enough to say. Other nations a lot closer to Japan than we are, I don't know.

Well, to Fred's point, Wikipedia tells me that two of the worst natural disasters of the 20th century happened during my childhood, during the 70s and I've never heard of them.

The 1976 Tangshen earthquake in China killed between 242,000 and 779,000 people.

The 1970 Bhola cyclone killed between 300,000 and 500,000 people in Bangladesh (then East Pakistan).

The 1972 Iran blizzard was also the worst of the century, killing 4,000.

Also in 1975 there was a flood in China that killed 231,000.

I'm thinking the Maoist regime wasn't so big on saving the lives.