"Most of us are retired, roughly 95 percent," explained Larry Murphy, leader of the group of the Alabama Disaster Relief team.

Since late Monday, the team has been slaving over a hot stove in a bid to provide hundreds of freezing quake victims with a decent, hearty meal. And at the same time they are managing to cook up new relations in a country their government has branded as part of an "axis of evil".

"We adapt ourselves to the ethnic food. But cooking rice is really hard in the way that people want it," Murphy explained as his team put the finishing touches to a consignment of rice and bean stew.

Opposite their open-air kitchen are hundreds of tents -- part of a new network of temporary settlements for quake victims moved away from the city as bulldozers continue to sift though the rubble for more bodies.

Back home, the Alabama group is nicknamed "the good old boys" -- altruists who pack up and head to zones hit by cyclones, floods or earthquakes.

A week ago as he learned of the scale of the quake, Murphy sounded the alarm to his team, scattered in the cities of Huntsville, Mobile, Montgomery and Birmingham.

One of the team, Marc Clayton, said he was in the middle of a fishing trip off the Gulf Shores in the Mexican Gulf. He quickly put away his tackle and headed for Bam, where he is now in charge of the team's drinking water distribution.

Spencer Wayne Speer, 67, worked for 20 years as a contract specialist for the US space agency NASA. After having undergone a knee operation three months ago, he was hesitant about heading for rubble-strewn Bam where up to 35,000 people were killed.

But he has no regrets, even though he gave up his Christmas holiday.

"We are overwhelmed how friendly they are," he told AFP, explaining how local officials were concerned over the team's sleeping conditions. "They brought us a big mattress; it was like sleeping at home."

Many in the team say they had a very vague idea about the Islamic republic -- a country best remembered in the United States for the 1979 storming of the US embassy in Tehran by radical students, who took the staff hostage.

Rodell Thacker, 73, is also happy he came.

"It's the best mission I have ever been on," he says in a southern drawl after adjusting his hearing aid.

TERRA.WIRE