Brothers Aleksis and Jake Zariņš of Southwold in the United Kingdom were on holiday in the Unawatuna Bay area of Sri Lanka when a tsunami hit Dec. 26. Now they are being hailed as heroes for their efforts to help victims, reports the East Anglian Daily Times.

They helped bring victims to safety and also helped local authorities in the grim task of photographing and burying the dead, the paper reported in its Dec. 31 edition.

The brothers are the sons of Peter Zariņš, owner of Zarins Antiques in Southwold in South Suffolk.

Thanks for the link to Ieva McDonald of West Glamorgan, who writes of the brothers, “I don’t know how ‘Latvian’ they consider themselves, but it’s good to know that descendants of Latvian immigrants can behave so well in such awful circumstances.”