At 3:02 a.m. last Tuesday I was lying in bed nodding off to sleep in Besiktas, a busy shopping district in the centre of Istanbul's European side. When the earthquake struck, I heard a low sonorous rumble then a wave of heat moved upwards through me as the building started vibrating violently.
My initial reaction was that there had been a gas explosion in my apartment building. As the shaking continued and became more violent, I began to realise that this was something different. I suddenly realised that I was experiencing an earthquake.
As the shaking became ever stronger, I rushed to stand under a doorway as I remembered hearing somewhere that this was the safest place to be. The ceiling of my living-room was groaning ominously and, as I knew I wouldn't have enough time to get out of my fifth floor apartment, my only option was to wait and hope that the building would hold.
Then, after what was the longest 45 seconds of my life, it stopped. The ensuing silence was broken by bewildered and frightened roommates emerging from their bedrooms.
In the scramble to put on clothes and light cigarettes, it became apparent that we were all badly shaken. We stood looking out of our balcony window, overlooking Istanbul and the whole city suddenly went dark. The phone went dead and there was no tap-water. We agreed the best thing was to leave and go to a place away from tall buildings.
The street was full: half-dressed parents clutching their children bemused rather than panicked, disoriented rather than frightened. The short walk to the Bosphorus waterfront saw a change in the atmosphere as people began to contemplate what had happened.
People were desperately trying to call relatives on mobile phones to no avail. Radios blared out newsflashes. The quake had affected the entire north-west. Izmit and Golcuk had been badly hit.
The hours passed and were punctuated by aftershocks. As the wine ran out, nervous laughter belied a deep feeling of disbelief and confusion felt by us all. The walk home at 7 a.m. revealed few signs of a serious earthquake.
The following morning, a two-hour queue at one of the few public phones working before I finally managed to get through to home to tell my family I was all right. Later the Irish consulate called to confirm my safety.
The day was spent sitting in a tea garden full of exhausted families huddled with a few belongings, too preoccupied to realise the enormity of what had happened, too drained to apprehend the inappropriateness of a man going from table to table selling lottery tickets. In the corner of the garden a television transmitted endless streams of footage of hastily-formed groups of civilians trying to rescue their neighbours from the twisted wreckage. A Turkish friend translated, but the images needed no translation.
As the footage streamed out and reports of the death-toll rose, exhaustion on people's faces was replaced by the realisation of the scale of the tragedy taking place. In the days that followed, rumours of the threat of another big quake kept people on edge and sleeping outside as sadness gave way to anger.
"Total Fiasco: Public anger growing" roared the headline of Friday's Turkish Daily News. The incapacity of the emergency services and the country's infrastructure in the face of the calamity and poor building practices have become a focus of public outrage as the death toll now seems likely to exceed 40,000.