Mother Nature clinging to her destructive ways

Just as the shock of Hurricane Katrina's deadly invasion of Louisiana and the Gulf Coast states of Mississippi and Alabama was beginning to wear off, the 7.6-magnitude earthquake that struck Pakistan, Afghanistan and India on Saturday has forced us back into the emotional abyss. Mother Nature's destructiveness and unpredictability are causing many to ask, "How much more of this can we take?"
There is the danger of generosity overload.
Reports that the death toll from the monster earthquake has surpassed 35,000, that thousands have been injured and 2.5 million are in need of shelter demand that we dig even deeper into our pockets than we already have for the victims of Hurricane Katrina.
With the Himalayan region in Pakistan being hardest hit by the quake, President Gen. Pervez Musharraf is accepting help even from Pakistan's longtime rival, India, which itself has had to deal with the loss of 1,300 residents of the Indian section of Kashmir. However, geopolitical realities are not easily ignored, as evidenced by Musharraf's declining an offer of Indian helicopters to help distribute aid and ruling out a joint rescue operation along the disputed Kashmir frontier.
India and Pakistan have fought two wars over Kashmir, which both countries claim as theirs.
But it is heartening that such animosities are being set aside for the sake of this major human tragedy.
Tsunami
While the 232,000 deaths make last December's tsunami -- it was caused by an earthquake in the Indian Ocean -- the disaster to beat all disasters, the sheer magnitude of the destruction from last Saturday's quake in South Asia is bone-chilling. High-rise buildings collapsed like houses of cards, schools crumbled before children had a chance to escape, and whole communities were reduced to rubble.
The response from the international community to this tragedy, just like the response in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, has been immediate and generous. Nation after nation is pledging money, sending food, medicine and temporary housing equipment and dispatching rescue squads to places like Balakot in the North West Frontier Province in Pakistan. Cries for help heard through a heap of concrete that was once a school resulted in the rescue of two girls.
"There are many more alive inside, but we can't take them all out because we don't have government efforts here," said Sadan Khattak, a student from Peshawar who was helping rescue efforts.
Therein lies the problem. The death count will continue to mount because logistics and simple geography have made it impossible for rescue teams and aid to be immediately dispatched to all areas affected by the earthquake. But this is not because of incompetent or uncaring government officials. Many of the hardest-hit communities are in the mountains and are not easily accessible, especially with roads now impassable and bridges that have collapsed.