What's bothering me is the fact that every time we hear of high death counts in other natural disasters, many people have a tendency to write it off to the fact that it occurred in underdeveloped or third-world countries, where building standards are lax, communication is poor, dictators don't care about their people, and/or God is punishing them for their manifold sins.
It's here now, in the country with the highest standard of living on the planet, and many premises will have to be checked in order for us to cope with these numbers and make sense of them.
It is a truly humbling tragedy that has occurred. Humbling.