What do "a week on" and "come back in" mean?

Question

Well, maybe, a week on, people would be trying to come back in and maybe try and get back to normal, at least start that process.

The context of this sentence is that after an earthquake (about a week ago), the survivors were waiting for rescuers so as to evacuate to other safer and intact places. But some people may have different guesses on what the survivors might/should have been thinking, and the quoted sentence is one of the guesses.

Two questions here in this sentence:

1. What does a week on mean? I think it means a week has passed. And what I'm more interested in is the meaning and usage of the preposition on here. Does it mean passed or going on or something else?

2. What does come back in mean? More specifically, why is the word in required in this phrase? Is there anything omitted in this context? And are there any other examples on how to use the in that is similar to this context?

Answer 1

A week on here refers to a week later, as time has passed by. The 'in' in 'back in' can be the indoors of a home, or an idiom referring to the group or collection of people.

Well, maybe, when a week has gone by, people would be trying to join us again and maybe try and get back to normal, at least start that process.