[patrickmclaren]

This does not put things into context at all. You do realize that this is a single event, localized in a single region of the world, right?

This is equivalent the population to small neighborhood all dying at once. In addition to destruction caused.

Regardless of the cause, large amounts of loss of human life in a single event are still considered significant. The reverberating effects throughout the neighboring communities are perhaps most noticeable. You are removing an entire node from a graph, rather than individual leaves.