By Dr. Robert Thorson

The mop-up after mid-August’s Hurricane Charley took place on many fronts. There was grieving for lives lost. There were homeowners returning to personal disaster. There was an influx of insurance adjusters, health officials, scam artists, hazard investigators and so on. Finally, there were journalists shifting the blame for the destruction to nature.

Consider this comment from the editorial page of USA Today, published a few days after the storm: “Much like terrorists who plot to strike when or where least expected, Mother Nature has a way of outwitting those who try to restrict, mitigate or even predict her violent ways.”

I reject the association between severe storms and terrorist bombs because it reinforces our separation from Mother Nature. We become the good guys, she the terrorist. We are the peacemakers; she is violent. We remain calm and steady; she is volatile. We are unisex; she is female. And worst of all, she plots against us, outwitting us in the end.

For a moment, assume that Charley wasn’t a storm but a mother grizzly bear that mauled a hiker who stepped unintentionally between her and her cubs. Would we blame the bear? I hope not. The bear did nothing wrong. Neither did Charley the hurricane.

I’m not suggesting that we stay out of bear country. Ditto for hurricane country, which can be — except for statistically inevitable local tragedies — a fine place to live. But to live in either place, we have to use common sense, learn from experience, hope for the best, prepare for the worst, give thanks when we are spared and accept our losses when we are not. We will never be able to predict exactly where the storm will strike or where the bear will bite.

Did Charley really hit us when and where we least expected? Of course not. Even for those without the weather channel, the hurricane process is well known. It follows a familiar pattern of geography, seasonality, wind, precipitation and storm track, which usually follows an arc curving from westerly to northeasterly. Hurricane Charley was typical in this respect. It reminded us that Floridians must be forever vigilant. Laplanders need never worry at all.

Are hurricanes any more violent than humans? Consider the violence humans do to the Everglades by draining its water to build tract housing, plucking the feathers from its tropical birds for hats, wrestling its alligators for showy machismo and fortressing real estate on shifting barrier islands and marshes by stapling them down with concrete jetties, sea walls and groins. Nature isn’t violent in and of itself, though it does require a convulsive event every once in a while so that its ecological agents — wind, ice, dust, fire, waves — can do their jobs. Strong gusts create forest clearings. Heavy falls of ice and snow set the boundary between deciduous and coniferous forest. Dust storms add mineral nutrients to impoverished desert plants. Fire is required for chaparral and pine forest. On balance, these temporary catastrophes enrich biodiversity rather than impoverish it.

Does nature really plot against us as a terrorist might? Absolutely not, unless you practice animist religions, are superstitious or assume that nature has it in for you. Bad things happen to good people. Good things happen to bad people. Evil has nothing to do with nature itself.

Is nature like a house, merely a place to live? Or is it a home, an entity that includes us? For me, it’s the latter: a home. Those who would blame nature for the recent destruction in Florida are like those who would blame a house for the crime that occurs within it. All of us would be better off to think of Florida’s repeated hurricane damage as a completely normal phenomenon, to which human lives must be adjusted.

Finally, what good does it do to blame our losses on a violent female? Hasn’t the biblical Eve gotten enough grief already?

Hurricanes, like human beings, are an inextricable part of nature. They are not malevolent, intelligent, female terrorists who strike the innocent without warning.

I have plenty of sympathy for those humans who were hard hit by Hurricane Charley or any other natural disaster. But I am never surprised when disaster strikes. What does surprise me is the continuing collective national astonishment for such routine occurrences, and for assigning a malevolent intent to nature. Nature is just being nature.