An old wire service buddy who used to be based in Rio would joke about how South American disasters had to be far more cataclysmic than some event in the United States in order to get the same amount of newspaper or broadcast space. For every tornado in the Midwest that claimed a couple of lives and destroyed a few houses, there would have to be a major plane crash or a nightclub fire in Brazil. “The boys in New York wouldn’t even look at anything under 100 deaths,” was his grisly remembrance.

It’s been an accepted maxim in the news business that Americans care a lot more about our own pain and suffering than those on the other side of the globe.

Then came Dec. 26.

The catastrophe along the coasts of Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Thailand and India is so beyond headline catchphrases that for the past couple of weeks there really has been no other news. Certainly, other things are happening more killings in Iraq, a couple of winter storms, the governor’s State of the State address, confirmation hearings on the new cabinet members and a month ago they all would have seemed pretty important. But not after we’ve seen the equivalent in fatalities anyway to 50 9/11’s.

The question is how much longer we pay attention. The world has been heartsick over the millions of injured and homeless, along with the realization that those 150,000 souls or 200,000 or whatever the final tally might be lost their lives for no other reason than being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

But the day is fast approaching when even this story will get pushed off the front page. This is scaring the daylights out of relief organizers, who fear that the hundreds of millions of dollars in pledges might not materialize. James Ensor, policy director at Oxfam International, an international relief agency, told Bloomberg News that “the real test will be to ensure that those promises are kept when the media spotlight turns away from the tsunami disaster.”

It’s not that people aren’t kind-hearted. Goodness knows, that’s been affirmed by the outpouring of donations to the relief effort. But at some point, the world will stop reading and watching, and the staggering numbers will just be an abstraction too numbing to contemplate.

Besides, it’s hard to juxtapose our normality with their devastation for very long. There just isn’t that much of a local angle here. The areas most devastated were very poor and had limited economies (figures), so it’s not as if any business in Los Angeles is likely to be affected by the death and destruction in Banda Aceh or Nagappattinam. (Perversely, communities just a few miles from the devastated coastlines appeared to be up and running, especially the resort hotels.)

There are those who don’t care a whit about economic impact or wire service body counts and are just packing their bags to lend a hand. Some of those folks will be there for weeks or months, and they are, simply put, inspirations. But priorities are different for the rest of us: The kids eventually have to be driven to school and the car needs a brake job and the bills must be paid. So we look at the far away pictures, shake our heads and move on.

It’s not so much forgetting about those people who never had a chance. It’s about doing the best we can right here living, growing and creating while also recognizing how fragile and yet resilient we can be. Those lessons go far beyond any local angle.

*Mark Lacter is editor of the Business Journal.