Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, June 2, 1995 TAG: 9506020110
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: NEFTEGORSK, SAKHALIN ISLAND LENGTH: Medium
As survivors shouted down regional officials who promised them new homes elsewhere on the island, a former czarist penal colony, cranes and bulldozers began leveling the rubble of what had been 17 five-story apartment buildings.
The message was clear: There is little hope that any more survivors were trapped in the ruins of Sunday's 7.5-magnitude quake. Some rescue teams were preparing to pull out.
The survivors of Neftegorsk had little reason more to stay.
``Give us money! We'll decide where we want to live! We want to go to the mainland!'' they shouted at officials. ``Let us leave!''
Since the quake reduced this Far Eastern oil town of 3,000 to concrete and brick heaps, 401 survivors and 690 bodies have been pulled from the rubble. Officials fear the quake killed as many as 2,000 people.
On Thursday, just three people were found still alive, and 121 bodies were recovered. Officials admitted there was little chance of reaching any more survivors.
``We are now largely engaged in lifting concrete slabs, freeing dead bodies and burying them,'' said Yuri Vorobyov, Russia's deputy emergency situations minister.
Sergei Shoigu, the minister of emergency situations, said rescuers had detected some faint signs of life under the rubble in five places - and in those areas, rescuers carefully picked through the ruins by hand.
Privately, rescue workers said it was unlikely they could reach anyone who still may be alive.
The government has said Neftegorsk won't be rebuilt and is promising the survivors, about 1,200 people, apartments and up to $10,000 per family. But there's a catch. The apartments will be in Okha, a dreary town 55 miles to the north, near the tip of this island.
The offer, made at a town meeting near a small, dusty square where food is handed out, drew angry outbursts. With the island economy faltering and oil jobs drying up, the quake was the last straw for the desperate residents wanting to go to the mainland.
Neftegorsk, like hundreds of Soviet mining and industrial towns, was established under a system that relocated people to where the work was, no matter how grim the surroundings. The town had little to recommend it other than jobs and the apartments that came with them.
While the Soviet system is dead, much of its sometimes callous paternalism lives on.
Without insurance, without job prospects, Neftegorsk's now-homeless people must rely on the government to resettle them. But the thought of moving to Okha, where buildings bear cracks from Sunday's quake, was more than many could bear.
by CNB