ANKARA, Turkey, Feb 6, (AP): Two years have passed since a devastating earthquake shattered Turkey’s southern region, but for Omer Aydin and many other of its survivors the memory and the suffering remain fresh. While struggling with a third winter in the cold inside a shipping container-like temporary housing unit, the single father of three is grappling with a cost-of-living crisis that is affecting the whole country as well as still trying to heal the scars from the disaster.

The magnitude 7.8 earthquake on Feb 6, 2023, and a second powerful tremor that came hours later, destroyed or damaged hundreds of thousands of buildings in 11 southern and southeastern Turkish provinces, leaving more than 53,000 people dead. Another 6,000 people were killed in the northern parts of neighboring Syria. It was one of Turkey’s worst disasters.

Aydin, a 51-year-old electrician who survived along with his elderly mother and his children, said sounds from the earthquake still echo in his mind. "The sounds of the homes crashing down, the sounds of the cries for help ... I still shake when they come to my mind,” Aydin told The Associated Press over the phone. The house Aydin shared with his mother and children in the Mediterranean port city of Iskenderun - in the worst-hit province of Hatay - split into two, he said.

The family were lucky to get out without injuries, he said, but ended up spending four days in the cold inside a makeshift tent he constructed with plastic sheets and pieces of wood. Aydin now lives in a container home at a temporary housing settlement called a "container city” in Iskenderun but is struggling to make ends meet on a small state pension that he says barely covers anything. He occasionally finds work as an electrician but jobs in Iskenderun are scarce, he says. He is the sole provider for his family.

His oldest son, who is 26, is receiving cancer treatment and needs to travel regularly to a hospital in the city of Adana, some 135 kilometers (84 miles) away, adding to the financial burden. His youngest child, a daughter, is at school while his middle son is also unemployed while waiting to start his military service. Life in the container city is a daily struggle, and sanitary conditions can be poor, he says.

His family will qualify to receive one of the hundreds of thousands of government houses that are under construction, but Aydin is worried about furnishing it or paying the bills once they move in. "I don’t even own a pin, what will I do once I move in?” he said. On Thursday, special prayers seeking blessings for the dead were recited from mosques, the state-run Anadolu Agency reported. Survivors visited cemeteries to pay respects to their loved ones, leaving carnations on their graves and offering their condolences to fellow visitors.