What disaster news does to us

On the moral toll of watching a calamity unfold

A news crew films Hurricane Irma.
(Image credit: REUTERS/Chris Wattie)

Half the state of the Florida is without power. At least eight people are dead. Every school and college in the state is closed. It's predicted that Hurricane Irma, which made landfall in the United States over the weekend, will cost some $50 billion in damages to homes, businesses, crops, and personal property. The evacuation was the largest in the state's history, leaving hundreds of thousands of people stranded, fighting for space in improvised shoulder lanes on northbound expressways as traffic backed up all the way to Atlanta and beyond.

Yet it is hard to avoid the sense that for some people the scale of the destruction in the wake of Irma has proved insufficient, even disappointing.

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Matthew Walther

Matthew Walther is a national correspondent at The Week. His work has also appeared in First Things, The Spectator of London, The Catholic Herald, National Review, and other publications. He is currently writing a biography of the Rev. Montague Summers. He is also a Robert Novak Journalism Fellow.