Hurricane Irene... Ahh!!

An image of Hurricane Irene from yesterday. This photo
belongs to National Geographic. I think it might be a little
illegal to use this image, but since I doubt National
Geographic would dare to stand up against our sister site,
Rational Geographic and her army of lawyers, I'll take my
chances.

Hurricane Irene is coming. In fact, it's already hit the continent and is moving continuously on upwards. It's thrashed through North Carolina and continues its wicked ascent toward Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey--even the great city of New York is threatened, and has closed down the biggest public transit system in the world. The hurricane is expected to go as far north as New England and was as far inland as West Virginia.

The poor East Coast is getting slammed continuously by natural disasters to which they are unaccustomed. Seriously, first the semi-serious quake in D.C. that caused considerable damage to monuments and archives, now the largest recent hurricane hurdling toward them? It seems disasters are no longer confined to the Carribean; they're making their way for the States. This is concerning a lot of people as it his now hitting a lot more people. Not only that, it's hitting people that rich people are closer to, namely Americans.

The question that I'm posing is simply this: is this hurricane a bigger or smaller deal than a, say, Katrina sized hurricane that would hypothetically strike off southeast coast of rural China? The basic question is whether it would be a more solemn loss to see the Chrysler building fall or to see a hundred family huts with no backup blown away.