The Neftegorsk earthquake is a catastrophic earthquake of magnitude 7.6 on the Richter scale that occurred on the night of Sunday May 28, 1995 at 1:04 local time on Sakhalin Island . It completely destroyed the village of Neftegorsk in just 17 seconds. This was the second major natural disaster in the Sakhalin region after the tsunami that struck Severo-Kurilsk in 1952 [2] .
| Earthquake in Neftegorsk | |
|---|---|
Neftegorsk Earthquake (1995), Sakhalin Oblast | |
| date of and time | May 28, 1995 |
| Magnitude | 7.6 |
| Depth hypocenter | 9 km [1] |
| Location epicenter | |
| Affected countries (regions) |  Russia |
| Injured | 2040 dead, 720 injured. |
According to the EMERCOM of Russia, 55,400 people lived in the territory that fell into the disaster zone (about 1,482 square kilometers). Of the 3,197 residents of the village of Neftegorsk, 2,040 people died, and economic damage was estimated at about two trillion undenominated rubles [3] .
Also that night, the cities and towns of the north of Sakhalin were subjected to strong shocks. In the city of Okha - the center of the Okhinsky district of the Sakhalin Oblast , with a population of more than 30,000, tremors reached at least 6 points. Some houses cracked the walls, somewhere overlapping, mostly at the seams; in others, ventilation units cracked, or chimneys partially collapsed, in some they could not stand it and the visors of the entrances collapsed.
Content
- 1 Background
- 2 Course of events
- 3 The fate of the village
- 4 notes
- 5 Literature
- 6 References
Background
According to the head of the laboratory of the Institute of the Lithosphere, Georgy Koff, 17 large-block houses that could not withstand the impact of the elements were not intended for earthquake-prone areas. In Neftegorsk, the houses were completely scattered, this was not even in Spitak in 1988. He suggested that such houses were built to reduce the cost of construction. As a result, mostly residents of the upper floors were removed from the rubble, and the people below were victims of the economy carried out in the 1960s [4] .
1995 was a year of unprecedented seismic activity in the Pacific . On January 17, 1995, an earthquake in the Japanese city of Kobe killed 6434 people. Russian seismologists expected shocks in the Far East , on the Kamchatka Peninsula . However, no one expected an earthquake in Neftegorsk, partly because northern Sakhalin was traditionally considered a zone of less seismic activity than the southern part of the island or the Kuril Islands. In addition, the extensive network of Sakhalin seismic stations built in Soviet times almost collapsed by 1995 [5] .
Event
The first to know about the tragedy in Neftegorsk were police officers and local authorities of the Okha region thanks to a report from the head of the Neftegorsk police department, police captain V. E. Novosyolov and senior police sergeant A. I. Glebov. A. Glebov, who miraculously survived after falling from the fifth floor of his destroyed apartment, managed to get out of the rubble on his own and headed for the building of the police department. It was destroyed and, as it turned out later, nine out of 14 employees died, five remained alive, but were injured. Telephone connection was broken, there was no other. Using an undamaged all-terrain vehicle, A. Glebov reconnoitered the affected village, identified the places of greatest destruction and went to the neighboring village of Szabo , where the head of the Neftegorsk District Department of Internal Affairs and police captain V. Novoselov lived with his family. They reported what happened to Okhu and asked for emergency assistance to the victims, and they themselves went to the scene of the tragedy. The message went to Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk , and then to Vladivostok, Khabarovsk and Moscow.
Violation of wire lines and the absence of other means of communication led to the fact that the administration, the headquarters of the Civil Defense Department and the Internal Affairs Directorate of the Okha regional center were unable to evaluate and clarify information on Neftegorsk in time. Information from them went to higher authorities at about 9:50 on May 28, 1995, that is, for almost nine hours, local, as well as regional and federal government bodies did not have a more or less clear idea of the scale of the disaster.
Deputy Director of the Institute of Marine Geology and Geophysics of the Russian Academy of Sciences Alexei Ivashchenko said that the epicenter of the earthquake was located only 20-30 km east of Neftegorsk, and not 80 km, as previously indicated. According to him, the hypocenter was located at a depth of 15-20 km. At the same time, according to seismologists, the shock strength was 7.1–7.6 on the Richter scale , and not 9. According to the scientist, it was the most powerful earthquake in the entire history of geophysical observations (since 1909) in this area.
The fate of the village
It was decided not to restore Neftegorsk, but to resettle its surviving residents in other settlements of the Sakhalin Region, primarily in Okhu, Nogliki and Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk . To do this, it is planned to allocate from the reserve or additionally commission the necessary (for about 500 people) living areas. The administration of the Sakhalin Region managed to transfer 17.8 billion rubles for these purposes, which is enough to build 71 apartments; the administration of the city of Okha provided 12 more apartments, but this was not enough. In addition, for those wishing to travel to the mainland 183 families (more than 300 people), twenty-eight families were provided with assistance in resettlement.
May 31, 1995 in Russia was declared the day of mourning . A memorial plate with the names of the dead was installed at the site of the village. Today, only slabs with house numbers carved on them resemble the locations of the destroyed houses.
Notes
- ↑ The 27 May 1995 Ms 7.6 Northern Sakhalin Earthquake: An Earthquake on an Uncertain Plate Boundary
- ↑ https://pravosakh.ru/news/post/7996/
- ↑ Batyr Karryev. Here came the earthquake: Hypotheses, Facts, Causes and Consequences .... - SIBIS. - 519 p.
- ↑ Flowers laid in memory of those killed in Neftegorsk on Sakhalin | KM.RU
- ↑ Dead Cities / Ghost Cities (Neftegorsk)
Literature
- The earthquake in Neftegorsk (May 28, 1995) // Disasters of the late XX century / Ed. ed. Dr. tech. Sciences V.A. Vladimirova. Ministry of the Russian Federation for Civil Defense, Emergencies and Disaster Management . - M .: URSS , 1998 .-- 400 p. - ISBN 5-88417-167-6 .