Survivors in seven countries on the shores of the Indian Ocean scrabbled frantically through debris and devastation for their loved ones today as the death toll climbed inexorably toward 55,000.
The scale of the destruction caused by Sunday's monster tsunami left governments helpless. On coastline after coastline, the sea disgorged the dead and rescuers fought through a morass of wreckage, mud and body parts.
The United Nations said the disaster was unique in encompassing such a large area and so many countries.
Aid agencies struggled to cope with the enormity of the disaster. The International Red Cross said it may have to treble its appeal for funds.
"The enormity of the disaster is unbelievable," said Bekele Geleta, head of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) in Southeast Asia.
The United Nations said hundreds of relief planes packed with emergency goods would arrive in the region from about two dozen countries within the next 48 hours.
Authorities waited in trepidation for the outbreak of diseases caused by polluted drinking water and the sheer scale of thousands of putrefying bodies.
Many of the dead were children, and television screens and newspapers were full of images of grief-stricken parents.
Sunday's giant 9.0-magnitude earthquake cracked the seabed off the Indonesian island of Sumatra. That tectonic movement triggered a tsunami that raced across the Andaman Sea and struck Sri Lanka, southern India, the Maldives, Malaysia, Myanmar and resorts packed with Christmas vacationers in Thailand.
In Sri Lanka, which appeared worst hit, the government said more than 18,700 people were confirmed dead and officials fear the toll will hit 25,000.
Indonesia said the death toll on Aceh island had reached 7,072. Along Khao Lak beach on the Thai mainland north of Phuket island, a magnet for Scandinavian and German tourists, miles of shattered hotels began yielding up their dead, bloated, gashed and mangled bodies - at least 770 dead, many of them Thai.