On Friday morning, I drove out to the Rockaways with Nan Shipley, a 48-year-old real estate broker and mother of three. Though we barely know each other, she had been sending me e-mails all week, updating me about the problems facing residents of the Rockaways, the thin peninsula on the southern edge of Queens that had been decimated by Hurricane Sandy.

Shipley, who lives in Manhattan, had been going out there every day since last Saturday, volunteering in the hard-hit enclave of Belle Harbor, where a Roman Catholic church, St. Francis de Sales, had essentially been taken over by relief workers. She had expected to help out for a day or two, assuming that the Red Cross, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or state and city workers would quickly take over.

But that hadn’t happened. As one day bled into the next, the volunteers had organized themselves. Leaders emerged who, with no prior experience, figured out how to help people in a disaster. They found restaurants willing to donate hot meals, rented buses to truck in more volunteers and brought in supplies to help residents battle the cold weather.

By Friday, when I arrived in Belle Harbor with Shipley, the church had been transformed into a model of efficient distribution. A volunteer disaster relief organization, Team Rubicon, made up of military veterans, had parachuted in and organized it to a fare-thee-well: meals given out on this side, diapers and baby food over there. To the extent that there was a government presence, it consisted mainly of a Medicare truck parked outside.