I think natural disasters are naturally going to happen-certain cycles like El Nino mean bad luck for us humans on a rotating basis that we could no more change than the ocean tides. But I also think that our actions-greenhouse gas emissions, building where we shouldn't, mining natural resources and degrading the land-have intensified the weather in a way that makes things harder for us.

National Geographic recently did an article on this subject:
link

This is the concluding quote from the article, edited a bit for easier reading:
"Weather disasters are like heart attacks...When your doctor advises you about how to avoid a heart attack, he doesn’t say, Well, you need to exercise, but it’s OK to keep smoking... The smart approach to extreme weather is to attack all the risk factors, by designing crops that can survive drought, buildings that can resist floods and high winds, policies that discourage people from building in dangerous places—and of course, by cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

“We know that warming of the Earth’s surface is putting more moisture in the atmosphere. We’ve measured it. The satellites see it,” Gulledge says. So the chances for extreme weather are going nowhere but up.

We need to face that reality, Oppenheimer says, and do the things we know can save lives and money. “We don’t have to just stand there and take it.”