Rescuers Race Clock To Save Quake Victims About 2,000 Buried, Both Living And Dead, In Aftermath Of Russia’s Worst Earthquake

The desperate cries and moans of trapped victims were heard from under slabs of crumpled concrete Monday as rescuers raced to free around 2,000 people buried in the rubble of their apartment buildings by Russia’s worst earthquake.

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.

Forty-eight hours after Neftegorsk collapsed, rescuers had found almost 1,000 survivors and nearly 400 bodies.

Rescuers honed in on moans and cries from under the piles of brick and concrete that once had been five-story Soviet-built apartment blocks, noted for their poor construction.

“When the sun sets and the rescue equipment stops, the town starts moaning,” Russian television reported. “These are the moans of those buried under the rubble.”

Witnesses said Neftegorsk collapsed in less than a minute.

One man hacked himself free with a small saw, then dug out his daughter with the saw and his hands. “I saw my daughter’s hand and heard her voice: ‘Daddy, I’m here.’ It took me 3 1/2 hours to get her out,” he said.

Authorities rushed relief supplies, field hospitals and at least 500 rescue workers to Neftegorsk aboard helicopters and small planes and dispatched an ice-breaker to clear a path for a hospital ships. The nearest airport that can accommodate large cargo planes is 400 miles away in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, and fog and poor roads make it a grueling trip.

“We are racing against time, against hours and minutes,” said Sergei Khetagurov, deputy minister for emergency situations. “Rescue work can help save victims only in the first two or three days. After that, there is no one left to save.”

Sergei Shoigu, Russia’s minister for emergency situations, told the ITAR-Tass news agency he expected the death toll to surpass 2,000.

Shoigu said it would take at least two weeks to clear the rubble.

The magnitude 7.5 quake struck the island at 1:03 a.m. Sunday (6:03 a.m. PDT Saturday).

“The whole town collapsed,” Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin said. “If this had happened in daytime, there wouldn’t have been so many deaths.”

Bodies lay on the ground under blankets and cloth scraps Monday and limbs poked out of the rubble as cranes plucked concrete slabs from mountains of debris. Stunned survivors combed through ruins or examined lists of the dead.

Some wept. Others simply stared off into space.

“Buildings collapsed like a house of cards. One man saved his family by pushing his wife and children out a second-story window,” a Russian television correspondent said from the scene.

Viktor Gurevich, vice governor of the Sakhalin region, said at least 300 people had been hospitalized, many in critical condition. Doctors said they would have to amputate many survivors’ crushed arms and legs.

The injured were being taken from Neftegorsk to hospitals in the regional center of Okha and to Khabarovsk, about 500 miles away on the Russian mainland. Some were taken to Vladivostok, 900 miles away on the mainland.

It was the strongest earthquakes in Russia’s history, and the worst in the former Soviet Union since a 1988 earthquake in Armenia killed at least 25,000 people. President Boris Yeltsin planned to address the nation today and cancel Independence Day festivities on June 12 as a mourning gesture.

The quake was centered offshore near Sakhalin’s thinly populated northern tip. Neftegorsk was 40 miles northwest of the epicenter.

News reports said the tremor destroyed about 20 five-story brick buildings which dated from the 1960s, when Soviet construction was especially shoddy. Only a few smaller buildings remained standing.

Deputy Prime Minister Oleg Soskovets called the decision to build a town in such an active earthquake zone “ill-considered” and Construction Minister Yefim Basin said Neftegorsk would not be rebuilt.

Soskovets said oil workers would be brought in from the mainland from now on. There were reports the quake had cracked oil storage tanks and pipelines, but Soskovets said he expected the oil fields to resume normal operations within days.

Sakhalin, some 4,000 miles and eight time zones east of Moscow, is rich in natural resources - oil, gas, coal, timber and fish. It also served as prison camp and exile spot for criminals and political dissidents during czarist and Soviet times.

Home to 750,000 people, Sakhalin was long closed to foreigners because of its sensitive military bases. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, it has opened itself to Western oil and gas executives and Japanese and Korean businessmen.

Japan, which occupied the southern tip of Sakhalin until World War II, offered aid to quake victims. South Korea said it would offer $1 million in relief; Sakhalin has a large ethnic Korean minority.