The more moderate position is an answer to the Problem of Evil, i.e. how can an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving God cause natural evil to befall His people. This position is that an overall rise in sin in the world will lead to more natural calamities in general. So it's wrong to point the blame directly at the victims of a particular calamity, but if the world's people are being more sinful in general, then expect more calamities.
The other possibility is that these calamities could have been less calamitous but for increasing incompetence, e.g. more earthquake deaths from poorly built buildings, more flood victims from poorly maintained levees, etc.
As the American Empire slides into debauchery and decay it makes sense that greed, corruption, incompetence, nepotism, etc. will lead to our decaying infrastructure and bad policy decisions leading to greater suffering from similar natural events in the past.
Here in California we have bad forest management and insufficient water storage to blame for increased destruction from wildfires.
God does not cause bad things. Think of it this way, God, good. Satan bad.
Looks like nature doesn’t care about us, doesn’t it?
Humans tend to project thoughts and emotions on things. We project intelligence on animals and progressives all the time.