What can be said about Haiti that hasn’t already been said this week?

Already the poorest nation in the Western hemisphere, Tuesday’s earthquake has left tens of thousands dead and injured and trapped hundreds of thousands more in the rubble.

This catastrophe will surely go down as one of the worst natural disasters of all time. Yet events like these tend to occur with depressing regularity.

It seems like only yesterday - in fact, it’s astonishing to realize it was five years ago - that an undersea earthquake off Sumatra caused a tsunami with waves up to 100 feet high, killing nearly 230,000 people in fourteen countries.

As in Haiti, the people in the vicinity were simply going about their business - and had virtually no warning.

Earthquakes aren’t the only culprits, of course. In 2005, Hurricane Katrina slammed the Gulf Coast, leaving more than 2,000 dead.

In 1985, Nevado Del Ruiz claimed more than 25,000 lives in Colombia, mostly from the mudflow that resulted from the volcanic eruption.

Historian David McCullough wrote movingly about one of the great disasters in American history, the Johnstown Flood. After especially heavy rains one year, the South Fork Dam broke, sending 20 million tons of water at 40 mph toward the city of 30,000 below.

According to Victor Heiser, a survivor who rode a section of his barn roof to safety, “I could see a huge wall advancing with incredible rapidity down the diagonal street. It was not recognizable as water, it was a dark mass, seething with houses, freight cars, trees and animals.”  Thousands died.

Yet even this disaster pales in comparison to the massive Yellow River Flood of 1931. Historians estimate that it killed between one and four million rural Chinese.

Even if you’re fortunate enough to live in an area where the ground doesn’t shake, hurricanes don’t blow, and tornadoes are unlikely to lift your roof off in the middle of the night, there are other natural threats, including The Big One.

On March 23, 1989, an asteroid bigger than an aircraft carrier - more than a half-mile wide - traveling at 46,000 miles per hour, passed through Earth’s orbit less than 400,000 miles away.

400,000 miles may not sound like a close shave, but in astronomical terms this was a near miss. Earth had been at that point just six hours earlier. Had the asteroid struck our planet, scientists estimate the energy released would have been equivalent to 1,000 to 2,500 megatons of TNT (or 1,000-2,500 one-megaton hydrogen bombs). It could have been what NASA calls, with some understatement, “a civilization-ending event.”

No one saw the asteroid until it had already passed by. And to think you lived to tell your grandkids about it…

Throughout history, tens of millions of our relatives and ancestors have succumbed to earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, tornados, cyclones, tsunamis, droughts, famines and pandemics. The idea that these are “acts of God” - in the literal sense - is a tough concept to swallow.

Yet if there is anything good to be said about the events in Haiti this week, it is how millions around the world are now putting their troubles and self-interests aside - at least for a moment - to lend a hand.

The situation is dire. Yet money, food, clothing, medicine and other essentials are pouring in.

If you’d like to help, feel free to donate locally, dial the Red Cross, or give to one of the world’s very best agencies for disaster relief - The International Rescue Committee.

Today’s crisis in Haiti can help us put our own lives in perspective.

The security of your job, the performance of your 401(k) and the size of your bank account are pretty small potatoes compared to the idea of having a child or grandchild trapped inside a collapsed schoolhouse.

So consider the suffering in Haiti. And express a bit of gratitude.

Except for the sheerest accidents of birth and circumstance, it could be you and your family in the rubble.

Carpe Diem,

Alex