IMHO, the hurricane, even in a Cat1 status, is still worthy the press coverage.
Building codes over the last 30 years have tremendously improved the chances of survival, but with such forces, it doesn’t take much unforeseen to still cause tremendous damage and death.
A century ago, some townships were wiped off the face of the earth, removing even concrete foundations from similar storms hitting at the right place, wrong time.
The newsworthyness of the Ca train wreck is probably also associated with the entire emergency response network in that metropolitan, entertainment media rich locale, being consumed by the event.
I suspect a similar number of casualties exist along the wake of Ike, but emergency response has not been able to fully assess the damage as those who may have dies, might not yet be known by anybody.
When the little boy cried wolf, it was understood that he was but a little boy; when we see such behavior on the part of a traditionally respected profession are we to then think that the profession has been overrun by little boys or that there is a sense about our present culture that has chosen to disallow individual assessment of risk?
First of all, the buildings in harm’s way were built with the full knowledge that they were in harm’s way, subsequently it should not come as a surprise that the risk preceded the outcome.
But that is a topic for sociologists and their like not for weather forecasters; witness the near-panic over Global Warming that has yet been shown to cause wholesale harm to the world population or even its lifestyle.
I expect more from those with whom we invest the task of objective evaluation, but that’s just my opinion.