Putting things in a perspective, the US-ers tend to either believe to be in full control of every minutia of everyday life or striving hard to achieve such control. Most of that control is illusory - the product of countless emergency preparedness drills and rituals - but it creates an expectation that everything can be controlled, prevented, made secure and infinitely perfected - except perhaps America itself and its core political institutions that are already perfect and subject of the entire world's envy. So there is a big shock if these expectations get a reality check.
I would say that most other nations do not share such delusions of absolute control and infinite perfectability of everything from the weather to the human nature. They realize that there are many things beyond human control - and scale their expectations accordingly.
I may also add that these delusions are mainly the middle class thing - poor people do not succumb to them. But since it is the middle class perspective that gets aired in the media, all we hear is surprise, surprise, we were unable to prevent a disaster, how could that happen.
This is not to say that things could not be improved and better preventive measures taken. But let's keep things in a perspective - there are many things we cannot and will not control.
Wojtek