Most people were in bed when the first earthquake hit. The ground shook violently as a fault roughly 200 km long and 25km wide slipped, causing a 7.8-magnitude earthquake.
The force in the early hours of February 6 caused death and destruction across hundreds of kilometres of eastern Turkey and northern Syria.
The UN estimated that 23 million people were affected; the death toll jumped by hundreds, hour after hour.
But as a number of experts told us in the wake of the tragedy, it’s not earthquakes that kill – it’s collapsing buildings.
This week on Beyond the Headlines, host James Haines-Young takes a closer look at the catastrophe and asks: could more have been done to make the buildings quake-proof?