Rescued by jumping out of windows
The night of May 28, 1995, divided the lives of people from the urban-type settlement of Neftegorsk on the northeast coast of Sakhalin Island into before and after. At 01:04 local time, an earthquake occurred – later it will be called the strongest earthquake in the region in the entire history of observation.
Construction of the urban-type settlement began in the early 1960s, it was originally called Vostok, and in the 70s it was renamed Neftegorsk. The settlement was considered a workplace for oil producers-shift workers.
According to the general plan, the settlement was designed for 5 thousand people. During the disaster, 17 five-storey buildings with 80 flats each, four two-story brick and large block houses, four kindergartens, a school and other buildings were built. At that time, 3197 people lived in Neftegorsk.
Neftegorsk was located 25-30 kilometers from the epicenter of the earthquake. Almost all apartments collapsed within minutes after the shaking started. Some residents fled just because they managed to jump out the window. Because the disaster was night, most of the oil climbers were asleep buried under the rubble.
“Apparently, I lost consciousness in a dream: when I opened my eyes, I realized that I was lying with my head on a board under a roofing material. It seemed to me that we were in the country and I lost consciousness again. When I awoke again, I heard people screaming, the crackling of burning boards, and the voice of my 14-year-old brother, whom I could see through the boards.
I don’t remember how we got out from under the rubble, but we all survived. Probably, they were born in a shirt,” one surviving local resident, who was 10 at the time, told the media.
Despite the destruction of all the largest residential buildings in the village, 80 wooden houses were not seriously damaged, and low-rise large block residential buildings were practically unaffected by the elements.
“There is no village, all five-storey buildings have been demolished”
The local hospital in Neftegorsk was also destroyed in the earthquake, and 30 doctors and nurses lost their lives. The survivors were left without medical care, but the worst was yet to come.
Due to the remote location of the village from the regional center, no one on the island was aware of the tragedy in Neftegorsk. Bridges and important sections of roads were destroyed, 300 kilometers of communication lines and 200 kilometers of power transmission lines were disabled, 45 kilometers of Okha-Komsomolsk-on-Amur oil pipeline, 11 oil pumping stations, 230 production wells were damaged.
As a result, in the first hours after the earthquake, survivors occupied themselves with weeding out the rubble, pulling concrete with their hands to get their relatives out from under the collapsed buildings.
According to one version, the village was seen from the air by helicopter pilots who delivered the oil workers to the clock. But then help came.
However, the second, more common version, says that Andrey Glebov, a 26-year-old employee of the Neftegorsk police department, who miraculously survived, was looking for rescuers. That night he was in his apartment with his one and a half-year-old daughter – his wife and son went to Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk.
“At one point the baby seemed to be crying, I went to bed and the next moment we were knocked to the ground by a blast from the fifth floor,” the man said in an interview with the media.
Coming out of the collapsed building, Glebov, according to him, got into the car and began to drive around the entire village to assess the scale of the disaster. The survivors were in a panic – stripped and bloodied, they sought help.
First, Glebov decided to collect all the equipment available in the village for people to warm up in cars. The police themselves got on an all-terrain vehicle and went to the neighboring village of Sabo to call the regional headquarters and report that Neftegorsk was in ruins.
“At first they did not believe, their first word, they say, to fall asleep. A representative of Vostokneftegaz arrived in Sabo. We explain to him that there is no village, that all five-story buildings were destroyed, that there were fires, and he said that he had to see all this first.
Maybe it didn’t inspire confidence in my appearance: I was wearing padded trousers and a sheepskin coat over my bare body, and a size 41 padding in my size 44. That’s all that was in the garage in the first minutes, we gave the rest of the decent clothes to the people, ”said Glebov.
Management personnel took off the helicopters to check the accuracy of their words. When the damage was confirmed, the pilots began to help the wounded – they immediately landed on the road, and then delivered the victims to the hospital.
“Before the earthquake, parents, friends, relatives had their own little, settled, comfortable and understandable world. And all this collapsed in literally 17 seconds, the tremors continued. It is very difficult to accept this: Someone succeeded, someone did not,” he said.
rescue operation
When information about the tragedy reached Moscow, the Russian government, under the leadership of Sergei Shoigu, created the Interdepartmental Commission for the Prevention and Elimination of Emergencies.
Rescue work in Neftegorsk From noon of 28 to May 30, 1,642 people were working at the debris removal site – of which 685 rescuers, 190 ground vehicles and 40 air transport units (25 aircraft and 15 helicopters).
The “clock silence” technique was tried for the first time in the rescue operation. To do this, all the equipment was drowned in order to hear the cries of the survivors under the rubble. Later, this practice began to be implemented all over the world.
The task was complicated by the fact that the village was initially a dense building and after the earthquake the settlement practically became a large blockade. Despite the considerable number of rescuers and special equipment, most of the victims were pulled from the rubble on the tenth day – by then they were all dead.
“I remember very clearly June 2nd. Then from the workplace, in the next hour of silence, they reported that the rescuers came to the living and we rushed there. The crane held the plate in the air, and the rescuers – the two Legoshin brothers – performed the three-month-old Arkasha Degtyar.
The boy in the one vest smiled without a scratch. It seemed that he did not have the strength to cry anymore, ”recalled Valery Belonosov, head of the transport and communications department of the Sakhalin Region administration.
In total, 2,364 people were rescued from the wreckage, 406 were found alive, 37 died during the evacuation stages and later in medical institutions, 138 were seriously ill for a long time, 42 were disabled. 2040 oil climbers died, including 268 children.
About 200 victims were sent for treatment to Moscow, Khabarovsk, Vladivostok, Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk.
Damage from the disaster amounted to hundreds of billions of rubles. In this regard, it was decided not to restore Neftegorsk. In the autumn of the same year, after reclamation, the settlement was liquidated, and the survivors were forced to move to other settlements.
Now on the site of the village there is a sandy desert with tombstones and a memorial complex.