  We study the humanitarian response to the destruction brought by the tsunami
generated by the Sumatra earthquake of December 26, 2004, as measured by
donations, and find that it decays in time as a power law ~ 1/t^(alpha) with
alpha=2.5 +/- 0.1. This behavior is suggested to be the rare outcome of a
priority queuing process in which individuals execute tasks at a rate slightly
faster than the rate at which new tasks arise. We believe this to be the first
empirical evidence documenting this recently predicted regime, and provide
additional independent evidence that suggests it arises as a result of the
intense focus placed on this donation "task" by the media.
