Neftegorsk (), formerly Vostok (, lit. ''east'') before 1970, is a

ghost town A ghost town, deserted city, extinct town, or abandoned city is an abandoned settlement, usually one that contains substantial visible remaining buildings and infrastructure such as roads. A town often becomes a ghost town because the economi ...

Sakhalin Oblast Sakhalin Oblast ( rus, Сахали́нская о́бласть, r=Sakhalinskaya oblastʹ, p=səxɐˈlʲinskəjə ˈobləsʲtʲ) is a federal subject of Russia (an oblast) comprising the island of Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands in the Russian ...

, Russia.

Founding

The town was built in 1963. It was an urban-type oil-mining settlement, with its name meaning "Oil Town".

Destruction

The town was devastated by an earthquake on May 28, 1995, which measured 7.1 on the

Richter scale The Richter scale (), also called the Richter magnitude scale, Richter's magnitude scale, and the Gutenberg–Richter scale, is a measure of the strength of earthquakes, developed by Charles Richter in collaboration with Beno Gutenberg, and pr ...

, killing 1,989 out of a total population of 3,977. An

oil An oil is any nonpolar chemical substance that is composed primarily of hydrocarbons and is hydrophobic (does not mix with water) and lipophilic (mixes with other oils). Oils are usually flammable and surface active. Most oils are unsaturate ...

-producing town in northern

Sakhalin Sakhalin ( rus, Сахали́н, p=səxɐˈlʲin) is an island in Northeast Asia. Its north coast lies off the southeastern coast of Khabarovsk Krai in Russia, while its southern tip lies north of the Japanese island of Hokkaido. An islan ...

, many buildings in Neftegorsk had been built with low-quality

concrete Concrete is a composite material composed of aggregate bound together with a fluid cement that cures to a solid over time. It is the second-most-used substance (after water), the most–widely used building material, and the most-manufactur ...

and were not designed to withstand

seismic activity An earthquakealso called a quake, tremor, or tembloris the shaking of the Earth's surface resulting from a sudden release of energy in the lithosphere that creates seismic waves. Earthquakes can range in intensity, from those so weak they ...

. As is common in remote Russian industrial towns, almost the entire population lived in a small number of high-density four-to-five-story apartment buildings. The earthquake destroyed many of these, reducing them to piles of rubble. On multiple streets in the small town, every building collapsed and all residents were killed. Because of the comprehensive nature of the death and destruction in Neftegorsk, it was decided not to be rebuilt, and a memorial was instead constructed in the area. The monument contains aerial pictures of the town both before and immediately after its destruction, allowing visitors a sense of scale of the disaster. Many survivors were relocated to other towns in Sakhalin such as Okha,

Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk (, , ) is a city and the administrative center of Sakhalin Oblast, Russia. It is located on Sakhalin Island in the Russian Far East, north of Japan. Gas and oil extraction as well as processing are amongst the main industries on ...

, and Nogliki, while others left Sakhalin for the mainland.

Population

References

External links

News story
(archived)

Geography of Sakhalin Oblast Populated places disestablished in 1995 Defunct towns in Russia Former populated places in Russia Populated places destroyed by earthquakes {{SakhalinOblast-geo-stub