Neftegorsk, Sakhalin Oblast

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Neftegorsk (Template:Langx), formerly Vostok ({{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, lit. east) before 1970, is a ghost town in Sakhalin Oblast, Russia.<ref name=":0">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Founding

The town was built in 1963. It was an urban-type oil-mining settlement, with its name meaning "Oil Town".<ref name=":0" />

Destruction

The town was devastated by an earthquake on May 28, 1995, which measured 7.1 on the moment magnitude scale, killing 1,989 out of a total population of 3,977.<ref>Template:Harvtxt attributes the fatality numbers to the Russian Ministry of Emergencies. The ISC, without citing a source, says "[a]s many as 1,989 people killed" (Template:Short-isc) Other sources attribute the "more than 2000" number to Japanese language sources.</ref> An oil-producing town in northern Sakhalin, many buildings in Neftegorsk had been built with low-quality concrete and were not designed to withstand seismic activity.<ref name=":1">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> 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.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> 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, and Nogliki, while others left Sakhalin for the mainland.<ref name=":1" />

Population

Population
1979	1989	1995
3,974	3,507	0

References

<references />

External links

• News story (archived)
• Archive footage of RIA Novosti