Lisa Schneider:

If the victims just sit and shake their fist at the universe, shout at God or shout at Karma, then they weaken themselves in the sense that they have just emphasised their helplessness.

Whereas if they say, I’m going to use this disaster that happened to me as if it were expiating previous things that I did to the world that were negative, and I’m going to grow stronger from it...In other words, I can’t do anything about the disaster but I can do something about my reaction to it. I’m not going to add to the suffering it has caused with a new suffering of agonising about myself and feeling helpless and feeling angry at the external world. I’m going to take responsibility for being in the way of the disaster as part of my own Karma and therefore I’m going to use this tragedy as an advantage toward freedom, towards Buddhahood.

Is that a way they can find meaning in their suffering?

They find meaning and they find advantage is the main point. They can say, this is going to be a conscious effort I’m going to do.

Now if they got killed, of course they’re not going to do anything in that life. But from the Buddhist point of view, if they have a lingering memory of a catastrophe because they died in a moment of panic and fear and worry for their loved ones and so on, if they retain some memory of this death-which often the just-dead do, in the Buddhist view in the bardo, the between state-and they’re saying, well, this is a terrible karma thing that happened to me and others. I will try to make my suffering a sacrifice, an expiation of previous things that I caused, and I’m going to have a better life in the future. — http://beliefnet.com