One of the criticisms I've seen of this paper is that Pielke doesn't take into account the fact that we've built more resilient structures in response to past natural disasters so the fact that the costs remain about the same means either those responses haven't been very effective or that the natural disasters have been getting worse but the additional resilience keeps the costs about the same.
Disclaimer: I am the State Hazard Mitigation Officer for my state...
Having said that, I can vouch for the fact that every state gets 15% of the cost of the disaster just for mitigating future damages. Everything from acquisition / demolition and elevations for flooding to safe rooms and wind resistant construction for hurricane and tornadoes. This has been going on since the late 80's and is part of the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act (Public Law 93-288) as amended. Section 404 covers the Hazard Mitigation Assistance and 406 covers Mitigation for Public Assistance (infrastructure).
http://www.fema.gov/robert-t-s...
Currently, our state has over 1,500 properties that are under deed restriction preventing any structures from being built there ever again.
Title 44 of the Code of Federal Regulations stipulates how the Hazard Mitigation Grant programs are to be implemented.
http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/C...
Add to that the newly (and controversially) enacted Biggert Waters National Flood Insurance Reform Act of 2012 and it makes the NFIP risk based as it should be.
http://www.fema.gov/flood-insu...
So yes, this nation has been actively seeking ways to make communities much more resilient to natural disasters.
And from an anecdotal point of view having been in emergency management for 15 years, I can say from personal experience that storms are getting more frequent and more powerful.