It was like a slap from someone you love dearly, a single short movement of the earth's crust that will cause heartache for years to come. The earth heaved, and for tens of thousands of people, their world came tumbling down.
Even Man at his most evil would be hard pressed to match the devastation wreaked this week by Mother Nature across north-eastern Turkey. The ravages of war in Kosovo, for example, are as nothing compared to the destruction visited in about 45 seconds upon the town of Izmit, about 80 km east of Istanbul.
Whole neighbourhoods have been flattened in the earthquake. Mounds of rubble lie where children used to play, and workers used to work. Roads have split and bridges have collapsed. The country's main oil refinery is on fire, and the smoke from the blaze obscures the sun for miles around.
You drive past the ruined buildings and do a quick calculation: 100 to 150 inhabitants per block, of whom maybe 20 were out when the earthquake struck early on Tuesday morning.
In each building, a few lucky ones survived, thanks perhaps to a sleepless night or extreme prescience that made them flee. A few more have been dragged from the rubble, or may still be. That still leaves about 100 deaths per block.
Only one conclusion is possible; the death toll will go on rising for days to come.
This is disaster at its most obscene and undignified. The victims died in their sleep, pinned to their beds by collapsing masonry. The concrete floors crushed together and the dead were extruded like excess mustard from a sandwich. In many places, a hand appears from the rubble, or maybe a pair of legs, like some obscene mockery of the process of birth.
Mired in dust and only half-clothed, the casualties are pulled from the wreckage, as their families look on. If they are lucky, someone remembers to cover them up with a sheet; if not, they risk appearing on Turkish television, which has devoted endless hours to maudlin and gruesome coverage of the disaster.
This was not disaster by chance. Even at the epicentre of the earthquake, many buildings survived. Graceful white minarets still reach to the sky. Modern multi-storey tower-blocks and even ancient wooden buildings remain unscathed. The mosques and monuments of Istanbul, some up to 1,500 years old, still stand. The foreign-owned industrial parts around Izmit have suffered little in the destruction.
Most of the buildings that collapsed went up in the past 20 years, stood about four to five storeys high and were clearly not built with earthquakes in mind.
Many more have sustained massive damage though they are still standing. Some of these have wide cracks up the walls; other are perched at rakish angles to the earth. All will have to come down.
On top of this comes the worry about the rampant fire at the Tupras oil refinery near Izmit. Experts are concerned that the refinery, Turkey's largest, might blow up, thereby causing a new cataclysm in the region. For the moment, the acrid smoke from the blaze burns the eyes and darkens the skies for miles of coastline between Izmit and Istanbul.
As people come to terms with the disaster, their anger grows. A man rails at the onlookers, and asks when will help come to unearth his son from the wreckage. A Kurdish woman curses Turkey, and says there will never be justice for her people. Behind her, the foot of her dead father protrudes from the debris of a collapsed apartment block. There are no rescue teams here.
Mrs Busra Durhat unleashes her anger in fluent German: "What will be do in the winter, when it rains and it snows? The government gives us nothing, it only loves the rich. The soldiers just help themselves."
The questions are only starting to be asked, questions about how such shoddy buildings came to be put up, whether they were ever checked by government officials, and if they were, why nothing was done to reinforce them.
And in spite of all the fine talk about infra-red equipment and sniffer dogs, it is bare hands that are clearing the rubble and leading the search for bodies. Relatives and neighbours comb the mounds of rubble for signs of life, at the same time scavenging for the few possessions that may have survived the destruction.
On teetering heaps for rubble, ready for imminent further collapse, they shout the names of loved one in the hope of receiving a response.
The main technique is: search for the bed, and the body is bound to be nearby. Ropes and shovels are the implements of choice. Occasionally, a JCB is brought in to aid the search, but mechanised equipment and qualified rescue personnel are in short supply.
Tens of thousands of people in Istanbul and throughout the region last night spent a second night in the open, preferring the discomfort of a concrete pavement or a grass verge to the risk of staying indoors when aftershocks are forecast.
Whole families are sleeping head-to-toe in the city's plazas and even in the grass margin between the two sides of the motorway. Down, but not out, they brew tea and listen for news on the radio, surrounded only by their essential possessions.
It is the same in Izmit, where impromptu campsites have sprung up around the collapsed blocks. There were long queues yesterday for bread and water, and most shops were either closed or their shelves were empty. The town's main shopping centre was completely empty and even the toll-booths on the motorway were unmanned.
Turks, ever the most disciplined of people in this region, have responded to their ill-fortune with dignity and restraint. Looting seems to be unknown here. The Yatas furniture store on the road to Golcuk was turned inside out by the earthquake, with mattresses, beds and cupboards all hanging out of the side the building, yet no-one has tried to steal the shop's contents.
Neighbours make neat piles of their friends' remaining possessions, for collection by surviving family members.
Considering its size and the fact that so many of its operations are based in the region, Turkey's army has been little in evidence in the rescue effort so far. Among the victims of the quake were a number of senior officers quartered in the local base.
You could see the navy's submarine fleet offshore in the Sea of Marmara all day yesterday, like so much useless technology at a time of great need.
While Istanbul has largely returned to normal, Izmit and the surrounding region will take years to recover. The town was home to many industries newly set up to supply European markets and it attracted thousands of poor migrants from the interior, lured by the promise of employment.
The most urgent need is for experienced rescue teams with hightech equipment to search for survivors in the rubble. However, the long-term challenge will be to help rebuild these people's home, and their lives.