Yet at the same time people expect sympathy. When a earthquake happens in California people want support, yet they live in a earthquake prone zone. Whenever Mt. Rainer explodes people of Tacoma, Washington are going to want sympathy, even though sedimentation from previous lahars show that most of Tacoma will be covered in feet of mud.

You don't hear Japanese complaining whenever their country gets hit by an earthquake or a typhoon or a tsunami, yet they experience these things every year or so. In the same way the Dutch deal with their levee problems every decade or so, but never complain - something like 25% of the GDP goes toward their levees. Probably the difference between people that deal with it so regularly they are used to it and those people that think "it's not going to happen to me" and then when it does they bemoan "why me!" There is no area of the US that doesn't have regular dissasters of some sort, so why do we in the US have more problem accepting dissaters than other countries? I've got no clue...

--RC

P.S. I'm not trying to harrass anyone that's experienced any of the dissasters this year, but I have to agree with HF and Margie: If you live in a hurricane prone zone, you should respect nature and not be surprised when it becomes extreme. To call this past year "fascinating" is the utmost in respecting nature in all it's horror.