Danny Westneat / Times staff columnist

It's been five days since the tsunami, yet the voices from Indonesia sound as desperate as ever.

"There is no food or water," writes Luci Ferrero, a liaison in the quake-stricken, waves-ravaged country who is helping a Seattle-based relief organization, Uplift International. Roads are impassable, she e-mailed. Up to a million are homeless. There is bedlam when food boxes are dropped into flattened villages.

"In this situation we may be sending volunteers in to become victims, too. There are many good-hearted people, but not enough supplies or organization.

"Lots of children have died and many more are traumatized. What can we do?

"I think this might as well be ground zero and we might have to start from scratch."

At about the time Ferrero was describing how a horrific tragedy was turning worse, here in the U.S. we elected to fixate on our own navels.

Tsunami relief isn't about us, continued