Sometimes even the most terrible events bring out amazing qualities in people. Irish woman Ita de Groot has been helping people since the tsunami hit Phuket on St Stephen's Day, tearing the heart out of the island she has made her home.
Originally from Rathmines in Dublin, Ita has lived in Thailand for six years. She lost friends all along the coast in the waves but the sheer scale of the job in hand means she has no time to mourn.
"I don't know who is dead or alive yet - it's just like all these poor people who've been coming here. People were hopping and in wheelchairs. It's just been thousands of shocked people landing in the helicopters here.
"Two little blond children arrived up holding hands - they were so shocked they couldn't speak," said Ms de Groot, who teaches English at the local Charlermprakiat High School.
"This is so colossal. All I can do is comfort people and put them on flights. Everyone here has been touched by this in some way."
She had a narrow escape herself, having been on the beach just 15 minutes before the wave struck.
"The stories you hear are so awful. There were two people going to Patong beach and were getting out of the car when the wave came. The wife got out one side, the husband the other side. The wife is gone.
"That's how small a gap there was between where the wave struck and what was left untouched," she said.
We are speaking at the Phuket City Hall, which has been taken over by marquees, at the centre of which is a wall of pictures of the dead and still missing, a truly heartbreaking tableau.
The volunteers come from the Phuket expatriate community, offering translation services, logistical help, whatever they can. Many have lost their friends, their livelihoods in the tsunami but, like Ita de Groot, they have no time to think about that for now.
Shock works in different ways. On the first day she sat on the lawn with a British family who had lost relatives and were battered and bruised from the deluge. "It was surreal. We were there talking about Christmas."
Ms de Groot lived in Essex for many years but she still retains traces of a Dublin accent. She has strong words of praise for the Thais and how much they have done to try and help.
"This is a developing country still and lots of these people have lost their relatives, their businesses, but they've done everything they can to help," she said.
As we speak, requests for volunteers to dig on beaches and get help to people are communicated via megaphone by Thai rescue workers, and bottles of water are given out to cope with the heat.
Rumours circulate about sightings of missing loved ones; over-stretched embassy officials seek to match the reports to the lists they have.
Getting a database together has been next to impossible while the numbers of dead and injured are still not known.