They may prove cathartic

Ancient and modern history offer many examples of the political impact of natural disasters, says Mr. Zeilinga de Boer, who teaches earth and environmental sciences at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn. For example:

• An earthquake in 464 BC that destroyed much of the city of Sparta, and a slave revolt soon afterward ("social upheavals often follow geological ones," says Zeilinga de Boer) significantly weakened the militaristic city-state in its rivalry with Athens. The quake "triggered Sparta's decline," he argues.

• An earthquake and tidal wave that killed 40,000 people in the Portuguese capital of Lisbon in 1755 - the most catastrophic in European history - prompted the French philosopher Voltaire and others to question the dominant philosophy of optimism on which the ancien régime was founded. The earthquake contributed to the intellectual ferment that produced the Enlightenment and the French Revolution.

From R Ford Christian Science Monitor

How better do you make others aware of risk

As I understand it warnings about the probability of huge tidal waves were on the ABC news in Aust 2 days before they hit across the indian ocean !

Learning from them

The left's commitment to reactionary politics doesn't make sense.There is a lot of good in our culture- the challenge is to find it amongst the barrage of cynical reactionary stuff that has been so much part of the 60's generation idea of news since then . After all its broadly "the West"that anticipates, plans and prevents. There would have been a lot less casualties from a tsunami if it happened in the Pacific.