Across South-East Asia, and thousands of miles away in Africa, the aftermath of the tsunamis that snuffed out tens of thousands of lives left shock, grief and the stench of death in the air.
From Indonesia to India to Somalia, mass graves were being dug, and the authorities were engaged not in an operation to rescue survivors, but to recover the dead, and bury them before epidemics of disease could claim even more lives.
In every area touched by the disaster, there was horror. In Indonesia, rescue workers pulled bodies from treetops, hurled there by the waves, or drowned as they had desperately climbed in search of safety, only to be overwhelmed by waters up to 30ft high.
On the ground, the streets of Banda Aceh, where 3,000 people died, were littered with bloated corpses, which were gathered up and laid out under plastic sheeting, awaiting identification by weeping relatives. Speed was of the essence – the threat of cholera and dysentery made the authorities fearful of an epidemic, but finding ground dry enough in which to dig graves was proving to be a problem.
The dead were not just drowning victims. Many of them were children and the elderly who had been killed by the churning wreckage of rocks, vehicles and wood thrown forward by the waves.
Banda Aceh suffered twice in the disaster – the earthquake that launched the tsunami wrecked dozens of buildings before the tidal wave arrived in its wake to bring even more destruction.
In Sri Lanka, thousands of troops were deployed to recover more than 12,000 bodies, among them 170 children drowned in an orphanage in Mullaithivu.
On the rubble-strewn streets, more than a million people had lost their homes, and aid workers faced a deadly danger – thousands of landmines from the country's civil war uprooted by the waters and littering the roads.
Thailand's holiday resorts were left broken. The suddenness of the waves' impact was to be seen in the scores of bodies clad only in swimming trunks – victims caught unaware and unable to escape as they sunbathed or swam. Outside one hospital alone, in Patong, there were 58 such corpses, including three babies.
The beaches that had been filled with holidaymakers were now full of debris, including cars, piled on top of each other by the force of the waters. Overhead, massive C-130 military transport planes were arriving from Bangkok with aid – and coffins for the dead.
One Briton living in Thailand spoke yesterday of how survivors had to tread over bodies to escape.
Barrie West, 61, who was born in London but has lived in Phuket for four years, said all the region's resorts had been destroyed.
"A friend of mine living on Ko Phi Phi told me how he managed to get off the island and he is lucky to be alive," he said. "It was just chaos. People had to tread on bodies to get off the island, everything has been destroyed."
He said Ko Phi Phi, which became internationally famous as the setting of the Leonardo DiCaprio film The Beach "just doesn't exist anymore".
Mr West said he and his Thai wife lived on higher land away from the beach area and managed to avoid the worst of the destruction. They have now taken in homeless survivors of the tragedy.
"We are all just doing what we can to help the homeless – we have basic services, we are surviving."
He went to see the damage at Patong. "There is a supermarket about 15 minutes from the beach, and it has a basement which filled up," he said. "They are still pulling bodies out of there." He described the moment he saw a 21ft wave come crashing into the town. "Everything happened so quickly. Everything was over in about one minute, and suddenly the sea was calm again and the sky was blue – it was all as before, except hundreds of people were dead, and everything had been destroyed."
Information about other Britons in the area was still very sketchy, he said.
He said it would take at least a year before any of the resorts in Phuket would be operating again. "There is nowhere for anyone to stay. There is just nothing here, nothing."
In India itself, where the beaches had been strewn with bodies, weeping and red-eyed parents held a mass burial for more than 150 children killed by the waves that had battered the south-eastern coast.
About half of the nearly 400 people who died in Cuddalore in Tamil Nadu state were children, leaving the town of 100,000 people in stunned bereavement.
Two pits were dug near the banks of the Pennai river for the burial.
A mile away at the town morgue, bodies of young and old lay unclaimed, awaiting identification by relatives.
And there was more grief in Somalia, on the coast of Africa, 2,800 miles away from the epicentre of the quake. The waves had raced across the sea and arrived on the north-eastern coast with devastating force, killing hundreds, and then travelling miles inland along watercourses to claim even more lives.