Latest disaster tests stamina of donors

After news broke last holiday season of the Asian tsunami, World Vision's Web site was so overwhelmed with donors that it crashed en route to helping raise $350 million worldwide, a record for the agency.

Yesterday, as news accounts detailed the suffering from a new Asian disaster wrought by a powerful earthquake along the Pakistan-India border, World Vision fundraising traffic on the Internet and phones was comparatively light.

That initial response is raising concerns of private-donor fatigue in a year filled with both domestic tragedies such as Hurricane Katrina and huge international disasters.

"Our call center isn't overwhelmed by any stretch right now," said Amy Parodi, a spokeswoman for Federal Way-based World Vision, which as of yesterday afternoon had raised $279,000 through online fundraising in the United States. That compares with more than $1 million raised for tsunami relief in the first three days after the disaster.

Two other aid agencies, Mercy Corps and CARE USA, also reported modest starts to fundraising appeals as workers offered stark assessments of the damage from Saturday's magnitude-7.6 quake.

Tens of thousands are believed to have been killed. There are more than 2.5 million homeless who will need food, shelter and other essentials to survive the winter.

"The last estimate I heard was that about 200,000 winterized tents could be used," said Faiza Jan Mohammad, a Mercy Corps official based in Islamabad, Pakistan. "And if you look around international markets, that's going to be tough to find."

Yesterday, World Vision and Portland-based Mercy Corps workers joined in the expanding international relief effort, bringing in a few supplies and scrambling to figure out the priorities for future aid shipments.

Foreign nations have pledged $100 million in aid to Pakistan, Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz said. Half of that was pledged by the White House.

The earthquake has collapsed buildings across a wide and rugged interior. Landslides and bridge collapses have cut off many overland routes.

"Nobody really knows the actual number of casualties," said Dr. Arif Noor, a Mercy Corps worker who yesterday visited the damage zone. "A lot of people are caught under the buildings and the debris, and many of the valleys that are further up north are not accessible."

Today, a Mercy Corps-organized team of about 20 people plans to visit one of these valleys in the Dadar area, which has a population of about 100,000. The workers intend to travel the roads to a washed-out bridge site, find a way across the river and carry supplies the last few miles by backpack, Noor said yesterday in a telephone interview.

As the scope of this disaster unfolds, aid officials hope donations from governments and private organizations will rise to cover the most immediate needs of survivors.

In the meantime, private aid agencies such as World Vision have some emergency reserve funds they can put toward the relief effort. But they cannot tap into money dedicated to the tsunami victims, whose plight stirred an unprecedented outpouring of donor cash.

"Anything that has been dedicated an emergency, that dedication is set in stone," said Parodi, of World Vision. "It's pretty much an integrity thing."

The most difficult task is likely to be the fundraising for long-term reconstruction once the quake victims are no longer front-page news.

Governments that pledge money to help with such tasks often do not follow through in the years that follow. This is what happened in the December 2003 quake in Bam, Iran, which killed more than 40,000 people and left tens of thousands homeless.

Some private aid groups benefit from large donations that can be used to respond to whatever disaster is most pressing. Oregon-based Northwest Medical Teams, for example, gets large amounts of drugs from pharmaceutical companies, and this week will ship a 20-foot container stocked with $2.5 million in antibiotics to Pakistan.

But many private aid organizations are concerned about follow-through from their donors in a 12-month period that has included genocide and famine in Africa and two powerful U.S. hurricanes, in addition to the tsunami.

"CARE is concerned that there are a lot of tragedies, and that could threaten to overwhelm people," said Lurma Rackley, a spokeswoman for CARE USA. "But we are still hopeful that once people understand the need, they will be more willing to lend a hand."

This latest disaster struck during the holy month of Ramadan, when Muslims not only practice fasting but are obligated to make their annual contributions to charity.

Some Muslims in the Seattle area, who have arranged fundraisers to respond to the quake, now share in a sense of calamity fatigue.

"There have been so many disasters, each of them pulling at our purse strings," said Jeff Siddiqui, a Pakistani-American who is chairman of the Islamic School of Seattle. "Personally speaking, I'm reaching into my pockets and coming out with nothing."

Many of this year's tragedies have devastated parts of the world with large Muslim populations, including the tsunami that struck Southeast Asia during the Christmas holiday last year, widespread drought and famine in the Western African countries of Niger and Mali and this latest disaster in Pakistan.

"You can't look at what is happening in Louisiana and not feel the pull," Siddiqui said. "We are giving to orphans in Iraq. You can't look at how the mudslides [from recent heavy rains] have turned entire towns into mass graveyards in Central America without feeling the agony. And then this happens and — my God."

Material from the Los Angeles Times is included in this report.

Hal Bernton: 206-464-2581 or hbernton@seattletimes.com