Katrina Who?

I'm not belittling the damage the Gulf Coast suffered from Katriana and Rita, but the reaction to the Pakistan/India earthquake seems muted here in the states.

As far as I can tell, the relief available is inferior even to FEMA executives who do product placement for Blackberry cell phone/PDAs to prove they're 'in touch.'

One account I saw said $350 million had been pledged to help the victims of the earthquake, which makes the 1906 look like a tremor in terms of damage done:

SF '06: 700 to 3000 dead (depending on who you ask).
Pakistan/India '05: 25,000 dead (again, not an exact figure, and this soon after I'm sure its subject to radical revisions).
SF '06: The town did look like a nuclear bomb had hit it because of fires that hit after the quake. I couldn't find a figure on how many people it displaced, but the whole city, as far as I can tell, had 400,000 people (if that) in 1906.
Pakistan/India '05: 2.5 million homeless. I'm suspicious of such a round number arrived at so quickly, but it gives persepctive if they can even take a stab in the dark and come up with a number like that.

From what news I have heard, Soviet-style concrete construction (where you use barely enough support columns to keep the thing standing in a strong breeze, use so much rock in the aggregate that the concrete crumbles when you remove the forms, then fill the structure with poor people) probably contributed to both problems in the current crisis. San Francisco in 1906 probably had no major advantages over modern Pakistan and Kashmere, but it would be nice if the progress made in this century extended to housing in places like Pakistan. I doubt you could even replicate the crappy construction that was knocked down with $350 million.

And of course, 'pledges' don't necessarily mean cash is coming. And when it gets there, if it has to percolate through the impossibly corrupt governments of India and Pakistan, $350 million might as well be two dollars and some good intentions.