Lately we have had some people saying that Rita, Wilma and especially Katrina were wraths of God delivered onto America for sinful ways, even though a reader of the Bible can clearly see that after Noah's flood, God Promised never to use floods again for his justice.  And while not everyone who died from those 3 hurricanes, drowned, a great majority did, and the worst damage was done not by the wind, but by flood waters.

But the article linked, and indeed events of this past weekend, tend to put things in better perspective.  The linked article talks about 'safe' places in the US.  And Guess what?  They are not any really.  The gulf and east coast get hammered by Hurricanes almost yearly.  Yet while they can and often are the most destructive, they are the only ones that come with sufficient warning to prepare and get out of their way.

This past weekend, 22 people lost their life in Indiana from a Tornado.  And that is but one of hundreds of tornadoes that hit the US, and especially Tornado Alley, every year.  Mos do not cause a lot of deaths, just a handful here and there.  But perhaps a half dozen do cause many deaths every year.  As do lightening storms.  So really, nothing east of the Mississippi, or south of Ohio, and out to the Rockie Mountains is a safe place.  We all suffer from something or another related to the weather.

So there is the Golden State!  California!  Well, sometimes the weather can get nasty (you should see the big deal they make of rain showers), but usually their shortcoming, along with the rest of the west coast and the southeast, is Earthquakes and Wildfires!  Both very deadly, and while wildfires are escapable usually, still many people die in them due to their unpredictability.  So you are not safe over there either, and they have been devastating the US since long before Christians new the land existed.

But if instead of looking for the new Sodom in New Orleans, we instead step back and examine what really happened, we see a small miracle happening.  For while Katrina will go down as the most destructive Hurricane in American History, what can we expect?  We developed the coasts to the point where you cannot throw a tree without hitting a house!  This has never been the case in the past, but continues to be a problem as people flock to the coasts and gobble up "Ocean Front Property".

Still, with literally Millions and Millions of people in the destructive path of these massive storms, less than 1000 died.  Less than 1000.  While all deaths are tragic, look at that in perspective.  The Galveston storm killed upwards of 12000!  Another back in the 20s killed about 2000!  Yet Katrina is only going to rank 3rd in deaths.  Hardly something that I would call a retribution of God!

And why are the deaths so low?  Because man now has the capability to warn way ahead of time, when one of those beasts are coming.  So while man has become more lackadaisical in fearing hurricanes, scientists have become better at saving their tail feathers when they do come.  Hardly an effective method of killing a bunch of people, who may or may not be good Christians.  It is said that a Hurricane expends more energy (a good sized one) in one day than all the atomic bombs in stockpiles the world over could generate if man decided to test the theory.  Yet bombs do a very good job of killing.  Hurricanes, in comparison, are very poor death devices.

So before we run cowering for a deep cave in Kentucky or Colorado (Avalanches there), it might behoove us that if a God was out to get us, why is he giving us the opportunity to save ourselves through invention and education?

And before we start fearing that every year we are going to get walloped by Katrina II or Fred and Barney for that matter, perhaps if we look at history, we see we have gotten a lot stupider about building, but a lot better at protecting people from their stupidity.  Sounds kind of strange that someone out to get us would be allowing us to set up our defenses to thwart that plan.  Especially one who is Omniscience.