You bring up a good point that in terms of size the disasters aren't comparable but you can look at it in terms of how well organizationally and as a case study. Obviously Lebanon is tiny compared the area of damage that Katrina inflicted but at the same time Hezbollah is tiny compared to the resources of the US government. If you look at it that way Hezbollah is doing far far better job with the resources they have than the US government did. Its true that Hezbollah does have some advantages but there is a lot to be learned from how they are addressing the crisis. From what I've heard is that they are leveraging a lot of grass roots help and working with locals. At the same time they've given empowered the damage assessors also with doing resource dispursement so that the same people on the ground determining needs can also get resources out without having to go through a lot of levels of bureacracy. If you compare that to the way FEMA, the Red Cross and a lot of major aid organizations work where they often work in opposition to local grass roots efforts and have very complicated bureacracy. As for the cutting off someone's hands if they're caught dipping their hands into relief money while extreme it does show how important it is to crack down on corruption quickly and forcefully.
