It's not that they're likening said devastation to a particularly abhorrent sexual assault - they're legitimately using 'rape' to convey a different meaning altogether (fairly frequently, too, according to Google). Dictionary.com - for what it's worth - offers,

...an act of plunder, violent seizure, or abuse; despoliation; violation: the rape of the countryside.

Most dictionaries (including the OED) mention something along similar lines. One word, multiple - distinct - meanings, the use of which should not belittle or trivialise the horror of its primary meaning. That said, I would probably avoid using it in the presence of someone who found the term uncomfortable.
( Happy Phantom has been to Hastings, Brighton, and Eastbourne too, Mon 28 Jan 2013, 19:52, 1 reply)

Hence why Johnny Depp (and Krtisten Stuart) had to apologise for using the term 'raped' in that context.
It rarely ends well.
( Wicca'd Witch needs ideas for a new sig on..., Mon 28 Jan 2013, 19:59, closed)

No-one should feel obliged to apologise for other people's ignorance; if they used the word correctly - ie, in a manner which is supported by decent, heavyweight dictionaries, as the entirely nonsexual plunder/despoil definition is - they really did nothing wrong.

Look, I'm not suggesting people go around actively forcing 'rape' into sentences purely to seem offensive whilst technically not being offensive - see 'niggardly' and 'the boy president' in relation to Obama - but people who use its secondary/tertiary/whatever meaning aren't necessarily doing it just to be assholes.
( Happy Phantom has been to Hastings, Brighton, and Eastbourne too, Mon 28 Jan 2013, 22:04, closed)