Davening Before the Tzara:
Rav Shimshon Dovid Pinkus zt”l (Sefer Tiferes Shimshon) quotes the Zohar that says that the flood was called “the waters of Noach” because he was blamed for it. He asks: The people of the generation were certainly responsible for their own fate. They caused the flood by sinning severely. Why is the blame placed on Noach, the only tzadik of the generation?
The answer is that since he was such a pure tzadik, he should have davened for them. Since he never begged Hashem to spare them, he is blamed for the mabul. After the mabul, Noach saw the destruction caused by the flood, and he was moved to tears. He offered korbanos to Hashem, and the pleasant fragrance rose heavenward. Hashem then promised to never again destroy the world with a flood. This was the complaint against Noach. He knew that offering korbanos has the power to prevent a mabul, yet he did not do that earlier.
This idea is seen from Chazal’s (Yalkut Shimoni, Yirmiya, Remez 327) interpretation of the verse (Tehillim 137:1): “By the rivers of Bavel. There we sat, and we cried.” Chazal state that when the exiled Jews saw that Yirmiyahu was leaving them, they all started to scream and cry. Yirmiyahu told them, “I swear to you that if you had cried even once in Tzion, you would not have been exiled.” If they had done teshuva and cried to Hashem while they were still in Yerushalayim. None of this would have happened.
Rav Pinkus goes on to relate that when he was a child, he once learned very diligently. His father told him, “I now see that you deserve a potch. I see that you can learn well when you want to, so why didn’t you learn like this yesterday and the day before?”
Hashem causes tragedies to occur to arouse us to daven and call out to Him. Thus, it is clear that we could avert the entire tragedy if we would cry at the right time. If we would do teshuva and daven beforehand, we would fulfill the purpose and prevent the need for any suffering.
Chazal say (Sanhedrin 44B) that one should always daven before a problem arises. The Chofetz Chaim zt”l would beseech people to pray while their lives were peaceful, so that they don’t need to undergo any suffering.