The night of May 28, 1995, split the life of Neftegorsk, a settlement on Sakhalin Island, into before and after. At 01:04 local time, a powerful earthquake struck the area, later remembered as the strongest event in the region’s recorded history.
The settlement began in the early 1960s under the name Vostok and was renamed Neftegorsk in the 70s. It served as a home base for oil industry workers. The master plan envisioned space for about five thousand residents. By the time disaster struck, 17 five-storey buildings with 80 apartments each, four two-storey brick and large block houses, four kindergartens, a school, and other structures rose across the area. The population stood at 3,197 people.
Neftegorsk lay roughly 25 to 30 kilometers from the quake’s epicenter. Within minutes, nearly all apartments collapsed. Some residents escaped by leaping from windows in the chaos. The disaster occurred at night, so many oil workers slept through the catastrophe, buried beneath the rubble.
“I most likely lost consciousness in a dream. When I woke, I found myself with my head on a board under roofing material. It felt like we were outdoors, and then I faded again. When I woke a second time, I heard people screaming, boards crackling with fire, and the voice of my 14-year-old brother peering through the planks,” recalled a surviving local who was ten years old at the time. “I don’t remember how we escaped from under the debris, but we survived. It felt as if they were born under a shirt.”
Even as most of the village’s tallest concrete buildings collapsed, eighty wooden houses remained relatively unscathed, and the lower, large-block residences fared much better against the shaking and the elements.
“There is no village, all five-storey buildings have been demolished”
The local hospital also met the quake with destruction, and thirty doctors and nurses lost their lives. Survivors faced a harsh reality: medical care was suddenly unavailable, and the crisis deepened.
Because the village was relatively isolated, news of the disaster traveled slowly. Bridges and crucial roads were wrecked, communications lines stretched for hundreds of kilometers were severed, and power and oil pipelines suffered extensive damage. In the hours after the quake, survivors pulled at the rubble with bare hands, seeking relatives and friends beneath the debris.
One account suggests helicopters initially spotted the village and dropped off oil workers to survey the scene, but another version places a different hero at the center of events. Andrey Glebov, a 26-year-old police officer who survived the tremor, was known to be in his apartment with his young daughter while his wife and son were in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk. He later described how a tremor crushed their building, and he managed to move through the village to assess damage and seek help.
Glebov recalled driving a vehicle around to gauge the scope of the disaster and grabbing any equipment available to help people warm up in cars. Police units and an all-terrain vehicle were sent to nearby Sabo to contact regional authorities and report the extent of the catastrophe. A representative from a local oil company arrived in Sabo, but initial disbelief persisted until the evidence of total destruction became clear. In the early minutes, clothing and warmth were scarce, so improvised attire and blankets were shared with those in need.
Helicopters were deployed to verify the claims and then to assist the wounded, landing on roads to deliver victims to medical facilities. The interviewed survivor noted the social fabric of life before the quake had dissolved in seconds, leaving many to confront a new, harsher reality—some people made it, others did not.
rescue operation
When the tragedy reached Moscow, the government formed an Interdepartmental Commission to prevent and respond to emergencies. From the afternoon of May 28 to May 30, a total of 1,642 people worked at the debris site, including 685 rescuers, 190 ground vehicles, and 40 air units (25 aircraft and 15 helicopters).
The rescue teams experimented with the clock-silence technique: all machines were muted to listen for voices under the rubble. The approach later became a standard practice in many rescue operations worldwide. The settlement, initially a tightly packed cluster of buildings, became a near-total blockade after the quake, complicating access for rescuers and supplies.
Despite the numbers, many victims were pulled from the rubble on the tenth day, and sadly, most did not survive long after rescue. A witness described June 2 as the moment when workers finally heard living sounds and moved toward those in need. A crane lifted a plate in the air while rescuers pulled a three-month-old child from under debris; the child appeared unscathed, though exhaustion showed in every line of the small body.
In total, 2,364 people were rescued from the wreckage, with 406 found alive, and 37 dying during evacuation or later in medical care. Hundreds endured long-term illnesses, and many were left disabled. Approximately 2,040 oil workers died, including 268 children. About 200 victims were transported to medical centers in Moscow, Khabarovsk, Vladivostok, and Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk for treatment.
The disaster caused hundreds of billions of rubles in damage. It was decided not to rebuild Neftegorsk; the town was liquidated in the autumn of that year, and survivors were relocated to other settlements. Today, the site hosts a quiet desert landscape marked by a memorial complex and tombstones that bear witness to the tragedy.