Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, May 30, 1995                   TAG: 9505300131
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
DATELINE: MOSCOW                                LENGTH: Medium

RUSSIAN QUAKE TOLL EXPECTED TO REACH 2,000

Russian television showed horrifying footage of a man, apparently pinned down under the ruins of his bed by concrete debris that covered his entire upper body, kicking his exposed legs feebly in a futile bid to extricate himself.

Survivors sat sobbing atop the shards that were the only remnants of Neftegorsk, a remote oil-producing town of 3,200 on Sakhalin Island in Russia's Far East that was flattened early Sunday by a 7.5-magnitude quake.

As of Monday evening, only 938 of the 3,200 residents of Neftegorsk were known to be alive, including 238 injured people pulled from the rubble. At least 100 of the survivors were in critical condition, and doctors said many victims would require amputation of arms or legs. The unofficial death toll rose to about 500.

Apart from a few dozen people who were vacationing or away on business, the remaining population of the town was presumed buried, either dead or alive.

With temperatures dropping below freezing at night, rescuers feared that few of the entombed could survive much beyond today. Minister of Emergency Situations Sergei K. Shoigu said he expects the death toll in Neftegorsk to reach at least 2,000.

President Boris Yeltsin asked for updates on the situation every 30 minutes and promised to address the nation about the disaster today. His chief of staff announced that the June 12 celebrations of Russian Independence Day will be canceled as a sign of respect for the victims.

Japan and South Korea both offered condolences and humanitarian aid to the victims of the Sakhalin quake. Russian officials said they were grateful for the offers but gave conflicting signals Monday about what kind of foreign aid would be accepted.

As the dimensions of the disaster became clear Monday, Russian officials and seismologists said that shoddy construction, budget cuts and indifference to seismic safety had probably magnified the loss of life from the quake.

A senior official in the Ministry of Emergency Situations, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Neftegorsk's buildings had been hastily thrown up in the late 1960s to house workers migrating to the oil-rich island. He said the apartment houses were not built to seismic standards, although many areas in the region are known to be earthquake-prone.

``The buildings that collapsed in Neftegorsk were totally identical to the ones that were destroyed by the earthquake in Leninakan in 1988,'' the official said, referring to the convulsion in then-Soviet Armenia that killed 25,000 people.

Cheap and haphazard Soviet-style construction was blamed for the exceedingly high death toll in the Armenian quake. Particularly vulnerable were the despised ``Khrushchoby,'' the inferior five-story buildings named after former Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, who commissioned thousands of the structures in the 1960s.

In Armenia, huge numbers of the Khrushchoby and other postwar buildings collapsed, leaving more than a million people homeless.

In Neftegorsk, according to journalists on the scene, not one of the town's 17 five-story Khrushchoby was left standing.

In addition to the apartments, stores, offices and communal buildings destroyed, an elementary school was damaged. Fires burned across town for a second day.

``If the buildings had been built in compliance with seismic construction norms, they would not have collapsed like cardboard boxes,'' the emergency ministry official said.

Keywords:
FATALITY