Oh, Crapdoodles

[browngirl]

On the other hand....

A massive earthquake has hit the Subcontinent, and apparently the death toll from Hurricane Stan (STAN? Dear sweet God, soon they'll have to start the alphabet over again if this goes on) is near 2000 people.

Am I an ignorant American, or have there been more than the average number of natural disasters in this past year or so?

Comments

[victorthecook.livejournal.com]

It has been a bad year for hurricanes in the North Atlantic, but only unusually bad in comparison to the last 30 years or so. As the_magician pointed out earlier, there has been a lull in hurricanes since about 1970. In fact, the 1970-79 period recorded the lowest-ever number of North Atlantic hurricanes. Compared to the 1920s and 30s, this season is a little above average, but nothing to write home about. In other parts of the world, hurricane activity hasn't been increased. Lots of marginal ground has been built on, though, and people were more inclined to ignore hurricanes in their building designs because it had been so long since the last bad one.

Also, in the US, we're hearing more about hurricanes that don't hit the US because we're sensitized to the information now. News teams would have said "Hurricane Stan hit point X; bad things happened", and we would have ignored it. For now, they're putting in more coverage, and we're paying more attention.

The tsunami, which is technically last year's disaster, was an exceptional event. No question about it.

The earthquake is not an unusual event in that part of the world. Hearing about it is more unusual, as is the fact of it striking a heavily populated area. There are more news teams in Pakistan now than, say, six years ago. When a news team gets hit with an earthquake, it will make the news.

So yes, it's been a worse year than normal, but a lot of it is that the events are happening in places the news covers well.