It's called a natural disaster. Even Man cannot control Mother Nature. History is replete with natural disasters, which make even Katrina look small.
For example, just 29 years ago, the planet's deadliest earthquake of the 20th century, by far, was a magnitude 8.0 that struck Tianjin , China, on July 27, 1976. The official casualty figure issued by the Chinese government was 255,000, but unofficial estimates of the death toll were as high as 655,000.
China and Bangladesh have been devastated repeatedly by floods - Bangladesh lost 300,000 people in November 1970 and more than 130,000 in April 1991, from cyclone-induced flooding, and the massive flooding of the Yangtze River in China in 1931 caused more than 3 million deaths from flooding and starvation. On average, floods cause more deaths each year than any other natural disaster.
The deadliest volcanic eruption of the 20th century was at Mont Pelée in Martinique, Lesser Antilles, in 1902. The coastal town of St. Pierre, about 4 miles downslope to the south, was demolished, and nearly 30,000 inhabitants were killed by an incandescent, high-velocity ash flow and associated hot gases and volcanic dust. And a small eruption of the Nevado del Ruiz volcano in Colombia on November 13, 1985, melted about 10 percent of the volcano's ice cover, leading to a massive mudflow that inundated the city of Armero and killed more than 23,000 people.
The 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake, known by the scientific community as the Sumatra-Andaman earthquake, was an undersea earthquake that occurred at 00:58:53 UTC (07:58:53 local time) on December 26, 2004. The earthquake generated a tsunami that killed more than 150,000 people, making it one of the deadliest disasters in modern history.
yeah, Bangladesh and their friggin monsoon season. Happens all the time, and yet I'm supposed to feel bad. Like I say, there's risk everywhere, but then there's stupid risk. The 2001 articles predicting exactly what just happened prove this was expected. Sitting ducks. Sure, disaster can strike anywhere, but getting caught in an earthquake in San Fran shouldn't be a surprise. Nor should this.