Natural disasters

I keep hearing people saying how exceptional the local floods are, even though there has been no loss of life, like there was in Russia [side note: wettest June on record in Britain and the water companies have hose pipe bans!] and what a disaster, "once in a century jobbie", of course these are the same people that are convinced that man is destroying his own planet with global warming!

Major disasters in just the last 40 years

Bangladesh   1970     500,000 Floods
Peru               1970      66,000 Earthquake
Vietnam        1971     100,000 Floods
China            1976     600,000 Earthquake
Armenia       1988     100,000 Earthquake
Iran               1990      50,000 Earthquake
Bangladesh   1991     139,000 Earthquake
South Asia    2004/5  285,000 Tsunami 
Haiti             2010      100,000 Earthquake

That is on average every 5 years a major loss of life happens because of a natural disaster, so how on earth can it be exceptional?

p.s. formatting table style does not appear to be available...