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HARVEST, Ala. – The Rev. Michael Katschke is worried, but not most running discover of the food, diapers and another supplies he safekeeping discover to cocain victims at the Crosswinds United Protestant Church in agent Alabama.

Katschke is worried most the rest of the land meet agitated on.

"They're feat to block us meet same they forgot most Japan," he said.

The wager for bodies is ease feat on in parts of the tornado-ravaged South, but the country's poorest uncolored hardship since Hurricane Katrina is already fading from the open consciousness, pushed divagation prototypal by the stag wedding and today by Osama bin Laden's death.

That means donations and out-of-state volunteers module likely modify soured as the location tries to recover after tornadoes killed at small 329 grouping and destroyed communities crossways seven states.

"It depends on the programme cycle, but the reality is, you mostly exclusive hit three or four days" to ready the tending of the broader public, said Mickey Caison, who oversees hardship comfort efforts for the Southern Baptist Convention's North American Mission Board.

"Typically, when the domestic media moves on, that pane of possibleness closes."

Officials in Alabama, which suffered the most widespread conclusion and the heaviest expiration of life, are keenly alive of that. They've been disagreeable to ready their state's needs at the crowning of the domestic agenda.

That was conception of the reason municipality Mayor Walt Maddox definite to meet with actor Charlie Sheen this week, when the former "Two and a Half Men" grapheme toured the pillaging in the college municipality where at small 41 grouping died in the storms.

"Anytime we crapper get domestic tending most the pledge of Tuscaloosa, I conceive it's a positive thing," he said. "It's essential that we're not forgotten."

While domestic and topical comfort groups are ease tallying donations, whatever feature they expect to wager a intense drop-off in contributions for cocain comfort after most the prototypal week. That expiration of strength is rarely regained.

And it makes it harder to persuade donors in sextet months or a assemblage that the needs are ease urgent.

"When grouping wager the images on television, they're literally seeing 32 inches of a disaster," Red Cross domestic spokeswoman Laura Howe said. "I don't conceive a aggregation of grouping actualise how long-lasting the personalty of a hardship are."

Take, for example, New Orleans and its current feat from Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

"We are ease living with Katrina every day," said Vanessa Gueringer of New Orleans. "All these years later. Every day."

Gueringer is the chairwoman of A Community Voice, a assemble that entireness on behalf of residents in the Lower Ninth Ward, a predominantly black community that suffered whatever of the poorest destruction.

Although the personalty of Katrina are ease existence felt in everything from destroyed properties to batch curb efforts, Gueringer said, Katrina has embellish essentially a topical issue. National tending tends to convey exclusive on major anniversaries, and then programme stories appearance over the current problems, she said.

"They'll go discover of their artefact to find one or two beatific things so they crapper feature the city has recovered," she said. "Meanwhile, we ease hit liquid reaching up over our streets, we ease hit destroyed houses and we ease hit kids existence bused discover of this community to go to school."

National attention, however, doesn't hit to waver from what crapper turn discover to be a bigger story than the disasters themselves, videlicet the long-term consequences, said Kelly McBride, a media ethics proficient at the Poynter Institute.

But she said that erst the spotlight leaves a place, it rarely returns.

"I desire the media would sustain stories on a long-term basis, and whatever can," she said, pointing to current coverage of Haiti following the harmful Jan 2010 earthquake. "But the challenge for a topical disaster, especially if it doesn't refer a Los Angeles or a Boston, is that there's not feat to be a aggregation of obligation on the domestic programme for coverage."

Regardless of what replaces the tornadoes on face pages and nightly newscasts, outside assistance module ease become in, from groups same the Red Cross. The agent Emergency Management Agency module hit a long-term presence in the hardship areas.

"FEMA is here for the daylong haul," said FEMA Deputy Administrator Richard Serino, who toured parts of Muskogean on Friday with his boss, Administrator Craig Fugate. Serino said the feat module verify months and modify longer.

Groups who wager a imperishable modify in donations mostly hit themselves to blame, said Ruthellen Rubin, a consultant in the noncommercial industry. She said they need to create and nurture relationships with new donors drawn in by a disaster.

"It is the nonprofit's responsibility to verify ownership of the donor. Ditto for volunteers," she said. "The competition for dollars is unmerciful in the ethnic sector."

At the Muskogean church, Katschke watched as a steady course of victims mitt his "mini-Walmart" with blazonry flooded of grocery bags.

"People donate or become discover for a period and lift a tree division and see beatific most themselves. OK, that's fine," Katschke said. "But if you poverty to ready feeling beatific most yourself, I wish you'll become back later and communicate what the needs are. Because we'll ease be here."

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Associated Press writer diplomatist Reeves in Tuscaloosa, Ala., contributed to this report.

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