"The lights of the traffic lights began to move wildly, very fast, then clouds of dust from the collapsing buildings and desperate people in the street".
Selim, a 45-year-old taxi driver from Adana in southeastern Turkey, still has fear in his eyes as he recounts the previous night's quake.
He was working and was stopped at a traffic light when she arrived.
"In the distance a building collapsed and I saw the smoke rising, I didn't know what to do, I pressed on the accelerator as I began to hear the screams".
Moments of panic, then "the fear remained".
Maybe "it'll be around for another week," he says on the phone with a friend, who says strong aftershocks will continue for several more days.
Scenes of pain and devastation, thousands of dead and collapsed buildings.
Listen to podcasts from Adana by ANSA collaborator Filippo Cicciù
It's night in Adana, just a hundred kilometers from the epicenter, but the lights of most of the very tall apartment buildings scattered throughout the city are off, the inhabitants have chosen to use the cars parked on the side of the road to sleep or try to rest a bit'.
Wandering the streets you see houses with cracked walls, broken signs on the ground, overturned cafe tables.
A mountain of rubble tears through the center of the city.
They are the remains of a 17-story building that has completely collapsed, as happened to another 14-story one, a few kilometers further on.
Crumpled refrigerators, smashed furniture and mattresses protrude from the rubble impaled by metal pipes still attached to the destroyed walls.
Rescue teams, together with volunteers and citizens,
they continue to dig through the remains of what until less than 24 hours ago was one of the many city buildings, next to the fire lit by those who hope to see their loved ones leave.
The rescuers ask for silence in order to be able to carry out their research in the best possible way but sometimes cries of despair are heard among those who in tears have now understood that they will never see their loved ones again and are unable to accept it.
"Mom where are you? What happened? I can't hear your voice anymore", cries the daughter of a lady who lived in the collapsed building.
She writhes so much that her friends have to hold her back by force.
"Fortunately nothing happened to us, just a big scare", says Ahmet, a 50-year-old restaurateur who is here as a volunteer to maintain security, together with the agents,
in a situation where calm can easily escape.
His face is astonished and sad, like all the people of Adana.
The drama begins to manifest itself directly as soon as she lands at the airport of the Turkish city.
Crowds of people in tears embrace those arriving on the last available flights, many having been cancelled.
Among those who arrived today was Selin, a 30-year-old physiotherapist who decided to end his holidays early to rush to help the earthquake victims.
"There is a great need for people willing to help", she says, explaining that in some areas hit by the earthquake, such as Antakya where she went, even entire hospitals collapsed.
"I spoke to my mother this morning, she is fine but my grandmother, my three aunts and their husbands are still under the rubble.
They all live in the same building and it's completely destroyed.
A hospital also collapsed nearby.
They don't have much information and when I spoke to her, help hadn't arrived yet", says Ozlem, a pharmacist from Istanbul originally from Hatay, one of the areas most affected by last night's earthquake.
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