Miracles vie with misery on the human slag-heap that used to be block 4a on the main road of the village of Bahgecik. All week, it's been an unequal struggle, marked by immense human dignity and perseverance on the one hand, and official incompetence and indifference on the other.

On Wednesday, the bodies were coming out of the pile of rubble at the rate of one every half-hour. Blackened, mangled corpses dressed in flimsy bed-clothes, dumped by the roadside overlooking the Sea of Marmara for collection once the pile grew large enough.

But there was hope too. Noises from within the twisted masonry and rubble, faint knockings or even whispered words. Survivors pushed and scraped frantically into the dark recesses of concrete and steel.

We arrived in time to see 23-year-old Hamiyet Kurt emerge from a small hole at the top of the wreckage. After 30 hours crouched inside a tiny space created when a washing-machine fell on top of a piece of masonry, Hamiyet came out dehydrated but only slightly injured.

Trapped only a few feet away from her father Emin, she lost all sense of day or night in her black, dusty prison. She remembers her father telling her to be brave, but at some point he lost consciousness and his voice went still.

The scenes at block 4a were replicated throughout the towns and villages of north-eastern Turkey, where thousands of homes and apartment blocks were ripped apart by Tuesday's devastating earthquake. No description could do justice to devastation on this scale, where each site is a fresh hell of broken lives, shattered dreams and occasional miracles.

At first glance, it seemed there was no method in this madness. What law of fate dictates that a baby's doll should be spared, while the child herself is crushed? That a glass jar of beetroot should come out unbroken, when its owner has been horribly mutilated?

One minute, Semiye Sezgi was pulling her dead father out of the debris in Bahgecik, the next she was able to retrieve the family's dinnerware, dusty but intact. These few sad possessions were loaded in the back of a car while Semiye continued the search for her missing brother.

By Thursday, the mood at block 4a had changed. Hamiyet's father's body was taken out dead. Surviving families, having gathered what left of their shattered lives, were preparing for the great exodus, most of them to Istanbul. A few men took out their mats and started praying. Those with relatives buried beneath the rubble were still searching, but hope was fading fast.

Finally, after 2 1/2 days, a German rescue team arrived with sniffer dogs and sensing equipment to offer some help. There was still no sign of the winching gear that could lift the concertinaed layers of concrete, and the waiting JCB spelt certain death for those trapped below if it was used.

The dogs quickly located two more corpses in the debris, but the team-leader refused to excavate. "We only look for living people," he explained bluntly, to the anger of the locals.

One of them, Ilyas, started digging for the body of his brother Hayrettin, but quickly emerged, saying he had heard knocking. The Germans looked sceptical, but the listening device lowered six feet into the rubble confirmed Ilyas's account. After 60 hours entombed in a hot, dusty, airless crevice, Hayrettin was still living, breathing and fighting for life.

But even now there were delays. Special cutting equipment had not yet arrived, and was probably caught up in the rising traffic chaos on the highway below. Many hours would pass before Hayrettin was cut out of his concrete prison.

Ahmed Kucuk was awake, praying, when the quake struck block 4a, just after 3 a.m. last Tuesday. "There was a terrible shaking and swaying. The ceiling cracked and the window broke. There was no time to dress, I just ran."

In Istanbul, everyone has a survivor's story. One man was awoken by his pet canary, and looked out to see flocks of birds flying away from the city. He ran out into the street just in time. Another man decided not to rent a particular apartment, and came back the next day to find it flattened.

But most people were asleep when the earth heaved. From the European side of Istanbul to the western shores of the Sea of Marmara in Asia, the tremors lasted less than a minute and sent thousands of buildings crashing to the ground.

Millions of people, the lucky ones, flooded into the streets. Even today, no-one knows how many were buried in the mayhem; the UN says it could be 35,000.

The villain of this piece is not obvious. In a war, you can point the finger at the evildoers, but who is to blame when Mother Nature wreaks havoc?

The earthquake could not be prevented, not could the time of its occurrence be predicted. Yet Turkey is one of the world's most earthquake-prone zones. Tremors in the region are common, and 96 per cent of the country lies in a high-risk zone. On average, there's a strong earthquake somewhere in Turkey every six years. No-one could say this event was unexpected.

There was a clear pattern to the devastation. Block 4a, like many of those that crashed to the ground, was built in the 1970s. It went up fast, and then came down fast at the first tremor. It clearly lacked the special construction techniques needed to withstand earthquakes, such as cross-bracing, flexible joints and special steel reinforcing rods.

Just behind it, the local mosque stands erect and undamaged. It's the same everywhere in the earthquake region; ancient, well-built structures and modern tower-blocks built to high specifications have survived, while the shoddy, jerry-built blocks beside them collapsed like houses of cards.

The speculators who put up these buildings - murderers as one newspaper called them this week - were driven by greed. Bureaucrats played their part by ensuring that official safety standards were never implemented or checked.

They would never have been built but for the massive migration to this part of Turkey, as peasants fled the land in search of (to them) well-paid industrial jobs. All around Izmit, you can see the giant factories - Goodyear, Philips, Pirelli, and so on - established by Western multinationals to take advantage of cheap Turkish labour.

This influx has enriched the few. Turkey is one of the most unequal societies in the world. The army and police are there to enforce the status quo, and not to protect ordinary citizens. This lack of common cause was abundantly clear this week. Quake survivors wasted no opportunity to vent their frustration and resentment at the forces of officialdom.

Throughout the affected region, ordinary people, the grief-stricken friends and families of those buried under the rubble, led the search for survivors. Self-appointed vigilantes with big sticks marshalled the traffic, while the police basked in the shade. The army largely looked after its own.

Official insouciance was breathtaking, right from the moment the Turkish authorities under-estimated the strength of the quake. It took American observers over 10,000 miles away to provide correct readings, leaving the Turks to blame a power cut for their mistakes.

The distrust of ordinary Turks for their leaders is huge. People rail at the government's efforts on television to raise donations in dollars and deutschmarks.

"We want bread and water, and they want money. They take it and we don't know what happens to it," says Ms Busra Durhat, resting on a cart that contains her family's possessions. "I left Germany because of their attitude to Turks, but I think my government treats its own people worse."

"Where is the great Turkish army, so modern and democratic, when we need them," says Mr Bulend Ertekin, as he searches for the body of his mother in Golcuk. "My mother has died once, but the people who are looking for the dead are dying a thousand times from the lack of help."

Help from abroad came too late to save many lives. Days passed before the cosy television images of sniffer dogs and rescue teams leaving Germany and the US were translated into help on the ground. As usual in a disaster, the media was quicker off the mark, while the so-called emergency response teams trundled into action at least a day later. How many of the thousands who were buried alive could have been saved if they had arrived earlier?

In the chaos that reigned in towns like Golcuk and Sakarya, it seemed like no-one was in charge. Desperate survivors pleaded for days for help in their searches to no avail. Then a mechanical digger would arrive, cut its way into the debris and destroy all hope of finding anyone alive. In the worst cases, corpses were cut in two as the JCBs went about their messy task.

The dead in Izmit have been taken to the local ice-rink, which has been converted into a morgue. The first funerals have taken place and already the cemeteries are full. Doctors now fear the spread of disease in the chaotic conditions prevailing many towns.

This week's events are only the latest in a long line of disasters to hit Turkey. Experts say the earthquake will knock 5 per cent off the country's gross national product. The fire at the Topras oil refinery in Izmit will cost billions to repair. Somewhere, money will have to be found to build new homes for the tens of thousands of people who are now sleeping on the streets. Massive selling is predicted when Istanbul's stock exchange reopens on Tuesday.

The tourism industry was already in collapse as a result of war in the Balkans and the trial of PKK leader, Abdullah Ocalan. The EU finds endless new excuses for refusing Turkey's application for membership, and now it has humiliatingly put the country at the end of a long line of new aspirants from Eastern Europe.

Throughout this tragic week, Turks have responded with magnificent dignity and composure to their ill-fortune. Uncomplaining families have spent days sleeping in the strip of grass between motorway lanes. In Bahgecik, the mattresses hanging out in front of the local furniture store, which was devastated in the quake, have not been touched, though hundreds of people are sleeping on bare ground nearby.

Every village and town in the country has organised makeshift aid convoys to send bread and tomatoes and blankets to the stricken areas of the north-east. This has, unfortunately, been a major source of the traffic chaos hampering rescue efforts.

The eyes of the world will inevitably turn away from Turkey in the coming days, but for millions of people here, the earthquake is a continuing nightmare. In Istanbul, every patch of grass was covered with sleeping bodies last night after the city's population were warned to go outdoors to avoid further tremors. Factories and offices remain closed, and those staff that are working looked jaded and rumpled after days of poor sleep.

Back on block 4a, the Germans have managed to free Hayrettin, after hours of patient digging and cutting. Badly injured and unable to talk, he is whisked away to an overcrowded hospital. But there will be no more miracles here, and the mechanical diggers are on their way to flatten the pile. The survivors have left to stay with relatives in the cities and the only remains of the dead are their clothes, collected together in small piles.

Here, and throughout north-eastern Turkey, a new smell makes it presence felt in the choking heat - the stench of death.