One of the less calamitous pieces of damage done by Hurricane Sandy was this: It knocked the facade off a wall on South Street just north of Broad Street near the East River, revealing a time capsule of hand-carved 1970s graffiti that included ancient phone numbers and declarations of love.
President Obama has ordered a freeze on new offshore drilling leases as well as a "thorough review" into what is almost sure to be the worst oil spill in this country's history — exceeding in size and environmental damage the calamitous Exxon Valdez disaster in 1989.
Satellite imaging companies are best known for documenting calamitous events, such as earthquakes, war damage and wildfires, from hundreds of miles above the Earth.
Australia collapsed from 42-0, much of the damage done during a calamitous afternoon session that saw six wickets fall as their top order were guilty of poor shots and dreadful use of the decision review system.
Just when we thought it was impossible for the calamitous George Bush and Svengali Dick Cheney to do any more damage to the world or to America's interests, they loosed one final Parthian shaft into the heart of the Mideast by giving Israel a green light to blitz Gaza and try to exterminate the Hamas movement.
He doesn't forecast the likelihood that calamitous weather events like Hurricane Sandy will cause far greater damage when the oceans have risen closer to the level of the cities, overwhelming roads, sewers, underground trains, and water systems.
Surely the parents and friends of the three who died have had far more emotional shrapnel to contend with in their lives than the neighbors (who admittedly suffered a calamitous violation of their sense of safety, not to mention property damage).
The calamitous deterioration in the subprime mortgage markets continues to expose vulnerabilities and disturbing financial damage to the cream of commercial and investment banking in the U.S. It is an enormous black eye for sacrosanct institutions employing true excesses in the form of financially structured products that involve unknowable levels of leverage.
The direct damage a full-on Tambora would wreak in a populated region would be far greater, and its hard-to-foresee effects further afield, like those Eyjafjallajokull had on Kenya, might conceivably reinforce each other in calamitous ways, multiplying the economic damage.
Not calamitous or terminal.
