This week ended as it began for the earthquake survivors of northwestern Turkey, with torrential downpours turning the tented villages into quagmires and making the task of rebuilding lives even more difficult.
However, it is not just the homeless and the injured who are having trouble coming to terms with the enormity of what happened at 3.02 a.m. last Tuesday week. While the earthquake's gravest effects may have been confined to the industrial towns of the northwest, there is scarcely a Turk whose life has not been touched directly by the catastrophe.
As the country's most industrially developed region, the northwest drew migrants from all over the country. As a result, Turks everywhere are now grieving for friends, relatives and former neighbours who lost their lives.
Expatriates living in Germany and the US have flown to Istanbul to search for relatives, not knowing if they are dead or just homeless.
The normally chaotic city of Istanbul is quiet. A month of mourning has been called and bars and clubs are almost empty, people preferring to stay at home and talk of their experiences of the tremor.
Even those who emerged physically unscathed from the quake say it has changed their lives forever. Survivors refer over and over again to the feeling of utter helplessness they felt last Tuesday morning when confronted by such an enormous natural force.
"You felt like a flea being rattled about in a matchbox," is how one survivor described the experience.
Others search for religious meaning to the tragedy. "Allah is big, man is small", and "every breath we take is a precious gift from God. From now on we will appreciate that" - these are two typical rationalisations of what happened.
For all the talk of God's will, there is a strong recognition by survivors that most of the death toll was caused by corruption and poor building standards. A number of building contractors are in hiding. The poor quality apartment buildings they erected in haste for a low-income industrial workforce were never going to withstand an earthquake.
Corrupt officials knew regulations were being breached and turned a blind eye. The Prime Minister, Mr Bulent Ecevit, has said municipal authorities must share responsibility for the death toll with the builders because they "did not take their job seriously enough".
However, survivors are expected to return to their homes if officials declare them safe, despite the fact that these are the same officials who sanctioned their construction in the first place.
The damage caused by the tremor has already had a significant effect on the Turkish economy. When the stockmarket reopened on Thursday, it lost 10 per cent of its value in one day. The catastrophe will end up costing Turkey $10 to $20 billion.
The cost of replacing housing alone is likely to be around $7.5 billion, most of which will have to be found by the government. Towns like Adapazari may have to be built again from scratch.
However, there are silver linings. The massive reconstruction effort will lead to a boom in construction activity and related sectors, and could see the economy grow by more than 3 per cent. Hundreds of million of dollars are likely to be poured into the country by international agencies on favourable terms. Greece has hinted it will lift its veto on EU structural aid for Turkey.
The real imponderable is how the earthquake will change Turkey's political and social landscape. The people's confidence in the ability of the state and the military to protect them has been permanently undermined. Some Turkish commentators predict this will lead to profound political change.
For the moment, the priority is rehousing the 200,000 earthquake victims who are homeless. Mr Ecevit has promised prefabricated housing will be ready before the winter begins and permanent safe housing will be finished within 18 months. Any slippage in that timetable could well see the people of Turkey deciding they've had enough of their leaders' incompetence.
