I’m not understanding how you think natural disasters contributed to an increase in EA/ED/SCEA applications.
Is your point that because a few colleges extended their EA/ED deadlines by a few days, this was the cause of the increase in apps? If so, I don’t agree. There weren’t many colleges that extended deadlines and most students that were planning to apply early had their apps ready or mostly ready by the time those few colleges did extend the deadlines, so I’d guess the extensions had little to no effect, just like the natural disasters had little to no effect.
I don’t know of anybody who wasn’t planning to apply EA/ED but suddenly did because they learned they had an additional 10 days. Just anecdotal, so I’m sure there were some in other areas who made that decision. But it’s hard for me to imagine that meaningful numbers of people suddenly were motivated to apply EA/ED by a few colleges giving them a few extra days to apply.