Catastrophe is not always preventable, but the degree of destruction and devastation can be mitigated, and as the leaders of Pune, and other cities, are recognizing, building resilience is also a key economic development strategy.
Similarly, natural causes can readily be found to explain the difference between the greater degree of devastation suffered in Haiti than in Chile: the proximity of the Haitian quake epicenter to heavily populated Port-au-Prince as compared to the more rural epicenter in Chile, poorer building construction codes in Haiti than in Chile, and so forth.
Some on the Israeli side agreed that the country's third war with Hamas in six years had yielded little in the way of strategic advantage, especially when weighed against the degree of devastation.
In some of these photographs of refugees in Serbia, Greece and other countries, you sense a degree of psychic devastation that you don't in his American pictures.
Recovering from this degree of devastation will take decades, and even then the reef will be only a shadow of its prebleaching self.
It's a year I've known a distinct degree of heartbreak and devastation, and paramount in that journey has been the unique turmoil of ending friendships.
"The extent of the devastation is monumental.
Some of the devastation is being caused by natural forces.
Below, images of the devastation, and the rescue effort.
(The BBC has a good slide show of the devastation).
