A month after the devastating Feb. 6 earthquakes in Türkiye, the wounds of the disaster victims are being healed day by day with the help of officials, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and humanitarian aid materials from abroad; yet trauma and shock still haunt many survivors, as they recall moments of tremors that caused widespread damage and left nearly 2 million people homeless.

Before the earthquake, Abdullah Senel had nerves of steel. But these days, just being inside a house makes him nervous – and it only takes the sound of a plane flying overhead to put him on edge.

"I was fearless in the past, but now a single noise is enough to freak me out," the 57-year-old former weightlifter told Agence France Presse (AFP). "Everything reminds me of the earthquake – even the sound of a plane," he said.

"It's been a month now but for me, it feels like yesterday," said Adem Serin as he watched heavy machines remove piles of rubble in the complex of high-rises where hundreds lost their lives.

'Initial shock'

"We couldn't get over the shock. I was caught by the quake on the 11th floor of a high-rise building. I can still hear the screams of people crying for help on every floor. This pain will never go away," said Serin, whose wife is five months pregnant.

Efforts to remove the ubiquitous rubble now dominate the city of 1.1 million people. Workers who arrived from all over Türkiye spray water on debris, and rubble-laden trucks trundle along the road waiting to dump the waste into a landfill outside Kahramanmaraş.

"Some 200 to 250 tons of debris is removed here daily, we are keeping it wet so that it will not disturb the environment and not generate dust," said Eren Genc, of the Forestry Directorate in the eastern Sivas province.

Operators sometimes come across precious objects while working to remove the rubble.

Levent Topal, from the waterworks authority in the Black Sea region, said his team spotted a safe deposit box in the rubble full of dollars, euros, gold and documents. "We never touch them, we deliver them to the police, who find the owner," he said.

A 54-year-old man took a big risk and climbed to the seventh floor of his building to retrieve items – despite the danger and more than 11,000 aftershocks that followed the earthquake.

"I know it's risky," admitted Veli Akgoz as he loaded a door and curtain rods onto the roof of his car. His entire family of 13 people, who used to live in five different flats, will now squeeze into a village house.

Tremors are still felt in the south of Türkiye; a month after the catastrophic quakes, however, another survivor – Havva Arslan, a mother of three, finally feels safe in her small but sturdy container home.

Arslan, her husband and their three children survived for five days trapped under the rubble of their five-story apartment building. The fact the whole family emerged alive makes theirs a rare survival story in the town of Nurdaği, where most buildings either collapsed or are marked for demolition.

It has been barely two weeks since the family was discharged from the hospital, and the five of them are trying to pick up the strands of what they call their previous life. They tentatively re-establish routines in their makeshift new home behind a petrol station.

"We were a well-off family. We had two homes and a car. We were thankful to God for all that. And we are thankful now that all my kids are safe. I have no fears now that my family is beside me," Havva said as she sat beside a wooden picnic table after a family breakfast.

Havva and her husband, Hasan, lost 36 relatives in the quake, and the grief is raw. One of their surviving relatives, grandmother Arslan, lives in a container next door with a broken foot. Acquaintances drop by to offer condolences.

Hasan, an accountant, says he will soon be ready to get back to work.

"Clients have started calling again. The governor sent town accountants a container; the guild sent a computer and printer. I'll then begin where I left off," Hasan said.

He pointed at a dusty metal safe containing documents salvaged from his collapsed office.

'Happy to be alive'

Both parents are happy that two of their children, one in the fourth grade and one in the eighth, can return to classes.

"Kids need school," Havva said, adding that authorities are setting up a school in a nearby tent city with children at first getting back for two days a week.

Their eldest daughter, Fatmagul, 19, has begun preparing for university entrance exams, which she will take in a few months. "I wanted her to study, but only when she felt she could, so I waited," Havva said.

"One day, I woke up, opened my eyes, and saw her sitting by the table studying. 'We have to start somewhere, mum,' she said."

On the night the quake hit, the parents and the three children rushed to hold each other when the violent shaking struck.

As walls collapsed around them, the floor beneath gave way, and the Arslan family fell one floor down, with the four floors above crashing down around them seconds later.

They were trapped in a pitch-black space, with no food or water and no idea how much time was passing as the hours turned into days.

After a while, the family began hallucinating, starting with the parents. "I was hungry. I saw apples and oranges but couldn't hold them. My mother was speaking on a phone that she didn't have," Fatmagul said.

A rescue team pushing through a crevice ultimately zeroed in on their cries for help.

"'My name is Fatmagul Arslan,' I shouted. 'We're five people here. All of us are alive, I said."

And then the moment of rescue: "Light came in through, I heard a sound and then saw the eyes of a man," Fatmagul said.

Last month's devastating 7.7 and 7.6 magnitude earthquakes flattened entire cities, killing more than 50,000 people across southeastern Türkiye and parts of northern Syria.

As of March 5, more than 400,000 tents were built in all quake-hit provinces, while 370,482 of them were prepared by officials, the country's interior minister, Suleyman Soylu, announced.

Around 1.5 million quake victims are currently living in tents, Soylu added.