Whenever Sema Genc enters a room, the first place she looks is the ceiling: would it hold up in an earthquake, or would she be trapped under the rubble again?

"That fear is always with you," said the 34-year-old, whose home in Antakya collapsed on top of her in a 7.8-magnitude quake that devastated swathes of southern Turkey in the early hours of February 6, 2023, killing her entire family.

"They got up and I woke up when they opened my door. Suddenly the building collapsed. I was caught in my bed but they were directly under the debris in the corridor. They died within minutes," said Genc, who works for an NGO helping Syrian refugee children.

Trapped under the rubble, her legs crushed and scalded by boiling water from a broken radiator, she spent 36 hours screaming for help before someone came to the rescue.

"It wasn't the earthquake but the destruction of our home that took my whole family from me. I feel really angry with those who built it," she told AFP.

The powerful quake and its multiple aftershocks wreaked havoc, leaving 53,725 people dead and 107,000 injured.

It razed 39,000 buildings and left another 200,000 severely damaged, figures from Turkey's AFAD disaster agency show. Nearly two million people were left........

© International Business Times