Are we tired of caring?

How many have to die before it's news?

World Vision's Steve Reynolds looks numb at the question. He's just back from northern Pakistan, a place with "as much destruction and human misery" as he's seen in his 22-year career. This guy knows misery. He was in Ethiopia for the famine in the '80s, Bangladesh for the cyclone that killed 130,000 in the '90s and Indonesia after the 2004 tsunami.

Folks at the Federal Way relief group all seem numb these days. They're weary from the busiest year of tragedy in anyone's memory.

And shaken that one of the five deadliest disasters of our lifetimes is being ignored.

The death toll from the Oct. 8 Pakistan quake now is 87,000. World Vision field workers say it may top 200,000, as towns of rubble have yet to be excavated.

The quake made 3 million homeless — more than the tsunami. More will die this winter unless more help arrives immediately, Reynolds said.

He visited a city of 30,000 — think Burien or Bothell — that "was wiped off the map. You couldn't find six buildings still standing. There's nothing left, just concrete, timbers and dirt."

Yet despite running radio and newspaper ads, as well as a Web campaign, the fundraising machine that is World Vision can't get people to respond.

It's raised $9.5 million worldwide for Pakistan, less than 3 percent of what it brought in for tsunami relief.

"Honestly, I think people just got tired of caring," Reynolds says.

"The fact that it was in Pakistan made it easier to put out of your mind," says Randy Strash, World Vision's strategy director for emergency response. "These are some of the people who cheered when the Trade Center towers went down. This is where bin Laden is hiding. It makes helping them seem somehow morally ambiguous."

Pakistan hasn't been a focus in the news, either. The Seattle Times, for instance, has run more than 50 stories, though none on the front page since Oct. 14, which was before the extent of the devastation was known.

"Everyone's frame of reference has changed," Strash says. "It's a huge concern to us that suffering on this scale is no longer a major story."

I sat and listened and then confessed: I haven't done a thing to help Pakistan either. No donations, no goods drives like we did for the tsunami. It's worth wondering: Why?

If we gave to tsunami relief, then we helped Muslims. So I don't buy that widespread religious or racial animosity has much to do with it.

But can anyone doubt that if a million blond, blue-eyed children were homeless or living in tents, we'd be moving heaven and earth to help them?

There's an apocryphal old saying in the news business: "One dead fireman in Brooklyn is worth five English bobbies who are worth 50 Arabs who are worth 500 Africans."

Yes, we've got our own problems to solve. But one of them is that so many people, here and abroad, are convinced this cynical formula captures how America views the world.

Maybe it does. If it doesn't, now would be a good time to show it.

Danny Westneat's column appears Wednesday and Friday.

Reach him at 206-464-2086 or dwestneat@seattletimes.com.