Sakhalin residents shared their memories of the earthquake in Neftegorsk

30 years have passed since the devastating earthquake in the Sakhalin village of Neftegorsk, which became one of the most tragic disasters in the history of modern Russia on May 28.

The earthquake occurred at night, when graduation parties were taking place in the village. According to eyewitnesses, the students were dancing at the disco and were going to meet the dawn — only a few remained alive.

"They said: well, let's have the last dance. And it turned out to be really the last one for many guys. We turned around, took a few steps, and were thrown. We fell," recalls Lyudmila, one of the survivors.

The first tremor with a magnitude of about 9 literally demolished the entire infrastructure, including 17 panel high-rise buildings, a club, and a dining room. After the first tremor, a series of aftershocks occurred, which causes a fire in two destroyed high-rise buildings, gas catches fire, and two more houses burst into flames in the morning.

Rescue helicopters did not reach the village until ten in the morning. According to eyewitnesses, the hospitals were overcrowded, people were lying on the floor. Specialists arrived from all over the country, and it was in Neftegorsk that the "hour of silence" was first used, when the equipment stopped to hear the moans of the survivors.

The commander of the Mi-8 helicopter, rescuer Nikolai Nikulin, said that multi-storey buildings had turned into graves. One of the rescuers, Anatoly Demsky, recalled how survivors were found by their voices.

"Moans, screams. They found and worked for living people in this place," Demsky said.

Plaques with the names of the victims are placed on the memorial in Neftegorsk. Some surnames are repeated 8-10 times. These are the entire families who died that night. Everyday objects can still be found at the site of the tragedy.

The exact death toll remains unknown. It is officially reported that more than 2.1 thousand people became victims, only 406 survived. It was decided not to rebuild the village.

On May 12 of this year, an earthquake of magnitude 5.7 was recorded in Chukotka. The tremors were recorded 647 km from the administrative center of the Penzhinsky district, the village of Kamenskoye, with a population of 630 people.