In the Kuril Islands, exactly 30 years ago, the most destructive earthquake in the history of the islands occurred. The island of Shikotan suffered the most. It all happened on the night of October 4-5, 1994, 120 km southeast of Shikotan Island. The earthquake was magnitude 8.1 on the Richter scale. Eyewitnesses say that the earth shook, everything swayed, a terrible rumble was heard, and the sky glowed with some kind of hellish fire.
A resident of the island village of Krabozavodskoye, Nina Ivanovna Mitrofanova, told a Rodina correspondent about this.
After this devastating earthquake, many people left the island. Now, less than three thousand people live on the Kuril Island of Shikotan. On Iturup – twice as much.
Nina Ivanovna invited me to visit.
The islanders are a special kind of people. You’ve just met them, and they’re already inviting you to the table and treating you to sandwiches with red caviar. Nina Ivanovna and her friend Tatyana greeted me like family. They showed how they live in a cozy apartment, where they moved under the program of relocation from emergency housing. And then, at the set table, the hostess told how she ended up on the island.
The islanders are a special kind of people. You’ve just met them, and they’re already inviting you to the table and treating you to sandwiches with red caviar. Photo: Olga Bukharova
At the age of 19, Nina Ivanovna came from Cheboksary to work at a fish factory for six months. And it stayed for life. She got married here and had children. Nina Ivanovna has four of them, now they live in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk. 20 years ago Nina Ivanovna buried her husband. Occasionally he travels to his native Chuvashia.
Journalist Olga Bukharova and resident of the island village Krabozavodskoye Nina Ivanovna Mitrofanova. Photo: Olga Bukharova
Nina Ivanovna still remembers that earthquake of 1994. Then it seemed that the apocalypse had arrived. “When at night, at 1.15, everything began to rumble, we could not stand on our feet, we crawled around the apartment,” recalls Nina Ivanovna. It felt as if we were on a boat in a storm. And then suddenly such a glow appeared! Like the entire globe It was burning. The electricity went out, but it was as bright as day. People ran out of the house and climbed the hills. The water rumbled for three days without stopping.”
And in Shikotan there is still shaking – a familiar phenomenon for the locals. They say that almost every month there is a magnitude three earthquake.
Shikotan earthquake occurred on October 4, 1994 at 23 hours 23 minutes UTC or on October 5 at 00 hours 23 minutes (Sakhalin time) east of Shikotan Island with a magnitude of M = 8.1 on the Richter scale according to the Sakhalin IMSP. Most world agencies gave the magnitude M=8.3). 11 deaths were reported and 32 people were seriously injured. More than 100 buildings were damaged.
Tsunami waves rose up to 12 meters. Wooden and panel houses suffered the least destruction. The greatest – brick and cinder block. In the villages of the island – Malokurilsky and Krabozavodsky – there were areas where the soil crawled. In some places there are landslides and collapses.
The epicenter of the earthquake was located at a depth of about twenty kilometers under the seabed, 120 kilometers southeast of Shikotan Island.
Source: rodina-history.ru
