Yeah, I think if you're not going to give a real place/situation the attention and centrality it deserves then it's better to make one up. Though obviously a fic set in a made up country during a made up natural disaster which used the same racist stereotypes would still have been Fail. There's multiple levels of wrong in that fic and any single change wouldn't fix them.
And now some meta about fiction in general rather than from a social justice POV: As someone who doesn't tend to enjoy post-apocalyptic stuff I think localised disasters aren't quite the same, since there's a whole functioning world still going on outside same as before, and after people rebuild the country/area might be different but the WORLD will be much the same, and the future isn't totally uncertain (it may not be happy, but "My town/country etc is doomed to collapse and ruin" is different to "human civilisation is doomed to collapse and ruin"). This goes double for a story about characters who aren't from the place having the local disaster, as this one was.
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And now some meta about fiction in general rather than from a social justice POV: As someone who doesn't tend to enjoy post-apocalyptic stuff I think localised disasters aren't quite the same, since there's a whole functioning world still going on outside same as before, and after people rebuild the country/area might be different but the WORLD will be much the same, and the future isn't totally uncertain (it may not be happy, but "My town/country etc is doomed to collapse and ruin" is different to "human civilisation is doomed to collapse and ruin"). This goes double for a story about characters who aren't from the place having the local disaster, as this one was.