Tsunami of the Kuril Islands. A monstrous echo of the ocean depths. Kuril tsunami. What a terrible, menacing noise came from the sea

In Severo-Kurilsk the expression “living like on a volcano” can be used without quotation marks. There are 23 volcanoes on the island of Paramushir, five of them are active. Ebeko, located seven kilometers from the city, comes to life from time to time and releases volcanic gases.

When it is calm and with a westerly wind, they reach Severo-Kurilsk - it is impossible not to smell the smell of hydrogen sulfide and chlorine. Usually in such cases, the Sakhalin Hydrometeorological Center issues a storm warning about air pollution: it is easy to get poisoned by toxic gases. Eruptions at Paramushir in 1859 and 1934 caused mass poisoning of people and the death of domestic animals. Therefore, in such cases, volcanologists urge city residents to use breathing masks and water purification filters.

The site for the construction of Severo-Kurilsk was chosen without conducting a volcanological examination. Then, in the 1950s, the main thing was to build a city no lower than 30 meters above sea level. After the tragedy of 1952, water seemed worse than fire.

In the fall of 1952, the country lived a normal life. The Soviet press, Pravda and Izvestia, did not get a single line: neither about the tsunami in the Kuril Islands, nor about the thousands of people who died. The picture of what happened can be reconstructed only from the memories of eyewitnesses and rare photographs.

Secret tsunami

The tsunami wave after the earthquake in Japan reached Kuril Islands. Low, one and a half meters. And in the fall of 1952, the eastern coast of Kamchatka, the islands of Paramushir and Shumshu found themselves on the first line of disaster. North Kuril tsunami 1952 was one of the five largest in the history of the twentieth century.

The city of Severo-Kurilsk was destroyed. The Kuril and Kamchatka villages of Utesny, Levashovo, Reefovy, Kamenisty, Pribrezhny, Galkino, Okeansky, Podgorny, Major Van, Shelekhovo, Savushkino, Kozyrevsky, Babushkino, Baykovo were swept away...

The writer Arkady Strugatsky, who served as a military translator in the Kuril Islands in those years, took part in the liquidation of the consequences of the tsunami. From a letter to his brother in Leningrad:

"...I was on the island of Syumushu (or Shumshu - look at the southern tip of Kamchatka). What I saw, did and experienced there - I cannot write yet. I will only say that I visited the area where the disaster I wrote to you about , made itself felt especially strongly.
The black island of Syumushu, the island of the wind Syumushu, the ocean hits the rock walls of Syumushu.
Anyone who was on Syumusyu, was on Syumusyu that night, remembers how the ocean attacked Syumusyu;
How the ocean crashed with a roar onto the piers of Syumushu, and onto the pillboxes of Syumushu, and onto the roofs of Syumushu;
As in the hollows of Syumushu, and in the trenches of Syumushu, the ocean raged in the bare hills of Syumushu.
And the next morning, Syumusyu, there were many corpses to the walls-rocks of Syumusyu, Syumusyu, carried out by the Pacific Ocean.
Black island of Syumushu, island of fear Syumushu. Anyone who lives on Syumushu looks at the ocean.
I wove these verses under the impression of what I saw and heard. I don’t know how from a literary point of view, but from the point of view of facts, everything is correct...”

In those years, work on registering residents in Severo-Kurilsk was not really organized. Seasonal workers, classified military units, the composition of which was not disclosed. According to the official report, in 1952 about six thousand people lived in Severo-Kurilsk.

In 1951, 82-year-old South Sakhalin resident Konstantin Ponedelnikov went with his comrades to the Kuril Islands to earn extra money. They built houses, plastered walls, helped install reinforced concrete salting vats at a fish processing plant. In those years, there were many visitors to the Far East: they arrived for recruitment and worked out the term established by the agreement.

It all happened on the night of November 4-5. I was still single, well, I was young, I came from the street late, already at two or three o’clock. Then he lived in an apartment, rented a room from a fellow countryman, also from Kuibyshev. Just lay down - what is it? The house shook. The owner shouts: get up quickly, get dressed and go outside. He had lived there for several years, he knew what was what,” says Konstantin Ponedelnikov.

Konstantin ran out of the house and lit a cigarette. The ground shook noticeably underfoot. And suddenly, shooting, screams, and noise were heard from the shore. In the light of the ship's searchlights, people were running from the bay. "War!" - they shouted. At least that's what it seemed to the guy at first. Later I realized: a wave! Water!!! Self-propelled guns were coming from the sea towards the hills where the border unit was located. And together with everyone else, Konstantin ran after him, upstairs.

From the report of senior lieutenant of state security P. Deryabin:

"... Before we had time to reach the regional department, we heard a loud noise, then a crash from the sea. Looking back, we saw a large wave of water advancing from the sea onto the island... I gave the order to open fire from personal weapons and shout : “Water is coming!”, simultaneously retreating to the hills. Hearing the noise and screams, people began to run out of the apartments in what they were wearing (most of them in underwear, barefoot) and run to the hills.”

“Our path to the hills lay through a ditch about three meters wide, where wooden walkways were laid for crossing. A woman with a five-year-old boy was running next to me, gasping for breath. I grabbed the child in my arms and jumped over the ditch with him, from where the strength only came from. And the mother had already climbed over the planks,” said Konstantin Ponedelnikov.

On the hill there were army dugouts where training took place. It was there that people settled down to warm up - it was November. These dugouts became their refuge for the next few days.

Three waves

After the first wave left, many went down to find missing relatives and release livestock from the barns. People didn’t know: a tsunami has a long wavelength, and sometimes tens of minutes pass between the first and second.

From the report of P. Deryabin:

"...Approximately 15–20 minutes after the departure of the first wave, a wave of water of even greater force and magnitude than the first gushed out again. People, thinking that everything was already over (many, grief-stricken by the loss of their loved ones, children and property), descended from the hills and began to settle in the surviving houses to warm up and clothe themselves. The water, meeting no resistance on its way... poured onto the land, completely destroying the remaining houses and buildings. This wave destroyed the entire city and perished. most of population."

And almost immediately the third wave carried into the sea almost everything that it could take with it. The strait separating the islands of Paramushir and Shumshu was filled with floating houses, roofs and debris.

The tsunami, which was later named after the destroyed city - "tsunami in Severo-Kurilsk" - was caused by an earthquake in Pacific Ocean, 130 km from the coast of Kamchatka. An hour after the powerful (magnitude about 9.0) earthquake, the first tsunami wave reached Severo-Kurilsk. The height of the second, most terrible, wave reached 18 meters. According to official data, 2,336 people died in Severo-Kurilsk alone.

Konstantin Ponedelnikov did not see the waves themselves. First he delivered refugees to the hill, then with several volunteers they went down and spent long hours rescuing people, pulling them out of the water, removing them from roofs. The real scale of the tragedy became clear later.

– I went down to the city... We had a watchmaker there, a good guy, legless. I look: his stroller. And he himself lies nearby, dead. The soldiers put the corpses on a chaise and take them to the hills, where they either end up in a mass grave, or how else they buried them - God knows. And along the shore there were barracks and a military sapper unit. One foreman survived; he was at home, but the entire company died. A wave covered them. There was a bullpen, and there were probably people there. Maternity hospital, hospital... Everyone died, recalls Konstantin.

From a letter from Arkady Strugatsky to his brother:

“The buildings were destroyed, the entire shore was littered with logs, pieces of plywood, pieces of fences, gates and doors. On the pier there were two old naval artillery towers, they were erected by the Japanese almost at the end of the Russian-Japanese War. The tsunami threw them about a hundred meters away. When dawn, those who managed to escape came down from the mountains - men and women in underwear, shivering from cold and horror, but most of the inhabitants either drowned or lay on the shore mixed with logs and debris.

The evacuation of the population was carried out promptly. After a short call from Stalin to the Sakhalin Regional Committee, all nearby aircraft and watercraft were sent to the disaster area. Konstantin, among about three hundred victims, found himself on the Amderma steamship, completely filled with fish. Half of the coal hold was unloaded for the people and a tarpaulin was thrown in.

Through Korsakov they were brought to Primorye, where they lived for some time in very difficult conditions. But then “at the top” they decided that recruitment contracts needed to be worked out, and sent everyone back to Sakhalin. There was no talk of any material compensation; it would be good if they could at least confirm their length of service. Konstantin was lucky: his work boss remained alive and restored his work books and passports...

This is the last of the five most powerful earthquakes on Earth, about which there has not yet been an article. Why wasn't it? Because it is the earliest? Not at all. Because it's not the most interesting? No, because it would be very funny for a person born in the USSR and living in a seismically dangerous area not to know about it and not be interested in what is happening in his practically native country.
Here's why: little is known about the earthquakes that occurred on the territory of the USSR, except perhaps from foreign sources. They knew that there were earthquakes, but the details were usually not covered.
Let's start:
November 4, 1952 at 16:52 local time at east coast There was a strong earthquake in Kamchatka. The earthquake was followed by a massive tsunami, which resulted in economic losses of approximately $1 million in 1952 dollars. The magnitude of the earthquake was initially estimated at 8.2, but in 1977 Hiro Kanamori recalculated it, and as a result the strength of the earthquake was 9.0 magnitude. The depth of the hypocenter was about 30 kilometers.
The tsunami caused enormous damage in the Hawaiian Islands. Midway Atoll was flooded, the water level rose by 1 meter. In the Hawaiian Islands, waves destroyed boats, telephone lines, piers were destroyed, beaches were washed away, and lawns were flooded. In Honolulu, the Harbor barge was dumped onto another cargo ship. In Hilo, the tsunami destroyed a small bridge. At Cape Cayena on the island of Oahu, wave heights of up to 9.1 meters were recorded. The north coast of Oahu saw much of the destruction in Hawaii. A boathouse costing about $13,000 was demolished in Hilo. One span of the Cocos Islands bridge was destroyed. In Hilo alone, damage is estimated at $400,000. However, in other coastal cities in Hawaii, the rise in water was barely noticeable.

Alaska also experienced a strong tsunami. In Masskru Bay the wave had a height of 2.7 meters and a period of about 17 minutes. Low-lying areas were flooded. In Adak, the wave height was less - about 1 meter - and only the shores in the harbor area were flooded. In Dutch Harbor, schools were closed and people evacuated to higher ground, but the wave caused no damage as its height was only half a meter. In other places, the height of the tsunami waves was even smaller - within 30 centimeters.
In California, the maximum tsunami waves were observed in Avila - 1.4 meters high, in Crescent - 1 meter, and in other cities and towns they howled less than a meter and did not lead to noticeable damage.
In New Zealand, waves reached a height of 1m. Japan also experienced a tsunami, but there is no information about damage or loss of life. Minor wave damage was reported as far away as Peru and Chile, more than 9,000 kilometers away from the earthquake site.

In Kamchatka, wave heights ranged from 0 to 5 meters, but in some places the tsunamis were higher (from the Kronotsky Peninsula to Cape Shipursky - from 4 to 13 meters). The highest wave was observed in Olga Bay and was 13 meters and there it caused significant damage. The time it took for the waves to reach Cape Olga was 42 minutes after the earthquake. From Cape Shipursky to Cape Povorotny, the height of the tsunami waves ranged from 1 to 10 meters and caused significant casualties and economic losses. In Avacha Bay, the tsunami was only about 1.2 meters high and arrived there half an hour after the earthquake. From Cape Povorotny to Cape Lopatka, the wave height was from 5 to 15 meters. In Khodutka Bay, the boat was washed up at a distance of 500 meters from the coastline. On west coast Kamchatka maximum height The tsunami was registered in Ozernoye and was 5 meters. On Alaid Island in the Kuril Islands ridge the wave height was 1.5 meters, on Shumshu Island - from 7 to 9 meters, on Paramushir - from 4 to 18.4 meters. In Severo-Kurilsk, the main city of the Kuril Islands, located on Paramushir, the wave height was very high - about 15 meters. The tsunami caused great destruction in the city and resulted in significant loss of life. On the island of Onekotan the wave height was 9 meters, on the island of Shiashkoton - 8 meters, on the island of Iturup - 2.5 meters. Waves up to 2 meters high were recorded on the Commander Islands and Okhotsk. On Sakhalin in the city of Korsakov, the wave height was about 1 meter.
At last count, the total number of victims was about four thousand people, most of whom were on the Kuril Islands.

Many destroyed villages and border outposts were never rebuilt. The population of the islands has decreased greatly. Severo-Kurilsk was rebuilt, moving it away from the ocean as far as the terrain allowed. As a result, he found himself in even more dangerous place- on the cone of mud flows of Ebeko volcano, one of the most active in the Kuril Islands. The population of the city today is about 3 thousand people. The disaster initiated the creation of a tsunami warning service in the USSR, which is now in a sad state due to meager funding.
HISTORYThe three earthquakes that occurred off the coast of Kamchatka in 1737, 1923 and 1952 were caused by the collision of the Pacific and Okhotsk plates. Northern Kamchatka is located in the western part of the Bering fault between the Pacific and North American plates. There are many earthquakes in this area, the last of which was recorded in 1997.
The earthquake of 1737 had a magnitude of just under 9.0, according to the latest calculations, the source was at a depth of 40 kilometers. The earthquake on February 4, 1923 had a magnitude of 8.3-8.5 and led to a tsunami, which caused significant damage in Kamchatka and casualties. The tsunami was about 6 meters high when it reached Hawaiian Islands, causing the death of at least one person. In addition, strong earthquakes occurred in Kamchatka on April 15, 1791 (magnitude about 7), 1807, 1809, 1810, 1821, 1827 (magnitude 6-7), May 8, 1841 (magnitude about 7), in 1851, 1902, 1904, 1911, April 14, 1923, autumn 1931, September 1936.
WITH late XIX century to the end of the 70s of the 20th century, 56 earthquakes with a magnitude of more than 7, nine with a magnitude of more than 8, and two with a magnitude of more than 8.5 occurred in Kamchatka. Since 1969, five earthquakes with a magnitude greater than 7.5 have been recorded on the peninsula (November 22, 1969 - 7.7, December 15, 1971 - 7.8, February 28, 1973 - 7.5, December 12, 1984 - 7, 5, December 5, 1997 – 7.9).

List of earthquakes for 1952 (magnitude greater than 7

)
1. Kepulauan Barat Daya, Indonesia, February 14, magnitude 7.0
2. Hokkaido Island, Japan, March 4, magnitude 8.13.
4. Philippines area, March 19, magnitude 7.3
5. Central California, USA, July 21, magnitude 7.3
6. Tibet, China, August 17, magnitude 7.4
7. Kamchatka, USSR, November 4, magnitude 8.9
8. Solomon islands, December 6, magnitude 7.0 November 5, 1952- in the ocean near the southern tip Kamchatka Peninsula, It happened earthquake 9 points and this entailed the destruction of some settlements in the Sakhalin and Kamchatka regions. The resulting tsunami(the height of the waves reached 13 - 18 m) the city of Severo-Kurilsk (Paramushir Island) was actually completely demolished.

There are 23 volcanoes on the island of Paramushir, five of them are active. Ebeko, located seven kilometers from the city, comes to life from time to time and releases volcanic gases.

But in the fall of 1952, the eastern coast of Kamchatka, the islands of Paramushir and Shumshu found themselves on the first line of disaster. The North Kuril tsunami of 1952 became one of the five largest in the history of the 20th century.

The population of Severo-Kurilsk before the tragedy was approximately six thousand people. In Paramushir, on the night of November 4–5, the population was awakened by an earthquake. Furnaces were destroyed; dishes and other household utensils fell from shelves; Water splashed out of buckets. Frightened people ran out of their houses. After the tremors stopped, which lasted several minutes, most of the population began to return to their homes. However, some noticed that the sea had retreated from the rocky coast to a distance of about 0.5 km. Those previously familiar with the tsunami, mainly fishermen, rushed to the mountains despite the calm sea.

The hearth of the underwater earthquakes was relatively close (within the Kuril-Kamchatka deep-sea trench). In the Pacific Ocean, 200 kilometers southeast of Petropavlovsk, a sea wave rose from the tremors above the epicenter of the earthquake. Accelerating her run and strength, rising higher and higher, she rushed to the shores of Kamchatka and the Kuril Islands. After 40 minutes of running, it grew to eight meters and overwhelmed the land. The lowlands and estuary parts of river valleys were flooded. It had its greatest height in the central part of the city, where it rolled along the river valley. A few minutes later the wave subsided into the sea. Ripping off the earth from the rocks along with trees and bushes, carrying rich prey into the ocean. She licked the outfits of border guards walking along the edge of the shore, watchtowers, boats, boats and kungas, wooden buildings. The bottom of the strait was exposed for several hundred meters. There was a lull.

After 15-20 minutes. the second one hit the city, yet a big wave, 10 meters high. It caused particularly severe destruction, washing away all buildings. Behind the wave, only the cement foundations of the houses remained in place. Having passed through the city, the wave reached the slopes of the mountains, after which it began to roll back into the basin located closer to the city center. A huge whirlpool formed here, in which fragments of buildings and small ships rotated at high speed. Rolling back, the wave struck from the rear the coastal rampart in front of the port area, where several houses remained, and broke through the mountain into the Kuril Strait. On the bridge between this island and the mountain, the wave piled up a pile of logs, boxes, and even brought two houses from the city.

A few minutes after the second wave, a weaker, third wave arrived, which washed a lot of debris ashore.

And the country lived an ordinary life. Not a single line was published in the Soviet press about the tragedy: the streets are lined with calico, the Soviet people greet the 35th anniversary of the Great October Revolution with enthusiasm! What kind of thing is there? North Kuril tsunami! The number of its victims is still unknown; according to official data, 2,336 people died in Severo-Kurilsk alone. And the city museum provides data from independent studies: adults - 6060, children under 16 years old - 1742; total – 7802 people. But these are only casualties among the civilian population, but there were also military men and prisoners (and, in general, no one counted these), so we can talk about 13-17 thousand dead

After disasters On the site of the city of Severo-Kurilsk, an almost empty area of several square kilometers was formed. The existence of the city here is reminded only by isolated foundations of buildings demolished by the wave, roofs of houses thrown out of the strait, the central gate of the former stadium and lonely standing monument soldiers of the Soviet army.

In the village of Utesny, all production facilities and buildings were completely destroyed and swept into the ocean. There is only one residential building and a stable left...

As dawn approached, reconnaissance planes from Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky appeared over the islands and took photographs of the area. Airplanes dropped warm clothes, blankets, tents and food for the population, who took refuge near the fires. Then a significant part of the population was evacuated to Sakhalin.

Severo-Kurilsk Bay today

Program - "High-profile case - Tsunami classified as Secret." The truth about the tsunami in Severo-Kurilsk - November 5, 1952.

Everyone has heard about the deadly tsunami in Japan, Indonesia and the Philippines, but few people know that our country also fell victim to this natural disaster. On November 5, 1952, a powerful earthquake occurred near the Kuril Islands, resulting in a tsunami with 18-meter waves.

The city of Severo-Kurilsk, located on the island of Paramushir, took the full blow of the disaster. Until 1952, most of the city was located right on the coast, in a natural valley. Tsunamis are, unfortunately, not uncommon in these parts, but the city was completely unprepared for a disaster of this scale. Moreover, at that time there was no reliable information about what a tsunami was and how to behave correctly in such cases.

First, the first wave hit Severo-Kurilsk, the height of which, according to experts, reached 15-18 meters. This happened at 5 am local time. People ran out of their houses in panic, and many managed to get to higher ground. But they did not know that under no circumstances should they return back after the wave recedes into the sea. After the first wave, a second, more destructive one always comes, and then a third.

The residents who went down were covered by the second wave, which arrived 20-30 minutes later. This, according to experts, was the reason for such a large number of victims. According to official data alone, the city of Severo-Kurilsk lost 2,300 people on that terrible November day. In total, about 6,000 people lived in the city at that time. The military took part in eliminating the consequences of the tsunami. On the same day, warm clothes were delivered from Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, people were provided with medical care and food was provided.

The city's infrastructure was completely destroyed. It was decided not to restore fish processing plants, a pier, residential buildings, social facilities and a military camp. The damage was too great. The city was rebuilt, and in the place where Severo-Kurilsk was located today there is a port. This terrible event was kept secret; it was not written about in newspapers or broadcast on the radio. People started talking openly about the Severo-Kurilsk tragedy only in the 90s.

After the horror they suffered, the country's leadership began to think about creating a reliable warning system for earthquakes and tsunamis. This primarily concerned the Pacific region. The Kuril Islands, the Kamchatka Peninsula, Sakhalin Island - they all belong to the territory of the Pacific Ring of Fire. This is the name of a region located on the periphery of the Pacific Ocean and characterized by increased seismic activity. It's all about lithospheric plates, at the boundaries of which earthquakes regularly occur. The Pacific plate in this regard is one of the most active on the planet, and its boundaries are even separated into a special zone, called by geophysicists the Pacific Ring of Fire.

More than 60 years have passed since the disaster in Severo-Kurilsk. Today, about 2,500 people live here, mainly employed in the fishing industry. The city was rebuilt, and only the memory monument does not allow us to forget about that terrible day.

To the 65th anniversary of the tragedy

What a terrible, menacing noise came from the sea,

How unsteady the earth suddenly became,

When two huge crests of grief rolled,

And the cry of the people beat, begging for salvation.

Inscription on the memorial

in memory of the tsunami victims1952. in Severo-Kurilsk

...The power of an incomprehensible element

She put the schooners on her butt.

Mad crowd.

And then, moving away, with a running start

The waves rushed towards the shore.

Having occupied the slope of Ebeko,

People looked down in fear...

Yuri Druzhinin. "Tsunami. Severo-Kurilsk"

On November 5, 1952, residents of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky were awakened by strong tremors. It was two minutes to 4 a.m. local time.

The walls of the houses swayed and cracked, plaster fell, cabinet doors opened and things and books fell onto the floor. The lights flashed and then went out. Frightened, undressed people grabbed children in the dark and left their houses in panic. And the ground continued to disappear from under our feet.

The earthquake lasted more than five minutes. Then the tremors began to weaken and gradually stopped. The houses survived. The light came on...

Meanwhile, in the Pacific Ocean, 200 kilometers southeast of Petropavlovsk, a sea wave rose from the tremors above the epicenter of the earthquake. Accelerating her run and strength, rising higher and higher, she rushed to the shores of Kamchatka and the Kuril Islands. After 40 minutes of running, it grew to eight meters and overwhelmed the land. The lowlands and estuary parts of river valleys were flooded. Having torn off the earth from the rocks along with trees and bushes, the wave rolled back, carrying rich spoils into the ocean. She licked the outfits of border guards walking along the edge of the coast, watchtowers, boats, cutters and kungas, wooden buildings, several small villages in Kamchatka and the Kuril Islands and the entire city of Severo-Kurilsk on the island of Paramushir.

After the first wave came the second. Then the third...

Horror shackled the people who found themselves in the face of the ferocious elements. There was no land anywhere, no sky... Only water. And there was no strength left...

It was a terrible night of an enraged ocean that devoured thousands of human lives...

I'm leafing through newspaper files for 1952. November. The Country of Soviets is preparing to celebrate the 35th anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution. There are cheerful reports from cities, enterprises, and regions. Appeals are printed with which workers should go out to festive events. The Ministers of Defense and Navy have prepared congratulations and orders for personnel. Finally, on November 6, a solemn meeting was held in Moscow, at which Comrade Stalin was present. November 7 – traditional parade, demonstrations of workers.

The newspaper "Pravda" - not a single hint about the tragedy in the Far East. Neither on November 6, nor on November 7, nor in the following days and even months...

The newspaper "Izvestia" is the same...

"Kamchatskaya Pravda" is also silent. And so as not to appear disingenuous in front of my readers, most of whom know everything, November 8, 9, and 10 are a day off. Finally, on November 11, he reports: “The Soviet people celebrated the 35th anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution with great enthusiasm and enthusiasm.”

It becomes clear that the earthquake and tsunami have been ordered to be forgotten. Although at this time in Tarya Bay, on the other side of Avachinskaya Bay, directly opposite Petropavlovsk, dozens and dozens of victims picked up throughout Kamchatka are still being buried. There are hundreds of wounded in hospitals, brought by ships from the coast. Petropavlovsk residents are still fearfully awaiting a possible recurrence of the disaster and are afraid to spend the night in their houses. They still cry and remember. But they have already ordered to forget.

The country never found out anything. Moreover, the world did not recognize it. For many years there were all sorts of conversations, rumors, and speculations. But what really happened?

And the documents documenting those events lay securely in dark vaults, closed with a double lock: “Top Secret.”

Nowadays, when any natural or man-made disaster instantly, with some kind of frenzied haste, splashes out on television screens and on the front pages of newspapers, the silence of 1952 can seem almost malicious. But we must not forget: this was the style of an entire era, without distinction of borders or ideologies. Hard style from the Cold War. A disaster, especially of such magnitude, was immediately considered a military secret.

The night duty officer at the Kamchatka Regional Committee of the CPSU, Comrade Kosov, experienced severe fright during the earthquake. In the second minute of the tremors, the lights went out. The phone went silent. The wooden building of the regional committee was swaying.

When the tremors stopped, Kosov, following the instructions, tried to call the party secretaries, but the phone remained silent. The light, however, was soon given. Then Kosov quickly ran around the offices to see their condition.

In many offices, plaster was falling off the ceilings, and case files that had fallen out of cabinets lay on the floor. The windows were open. The wall clocks hung at random, and many had stopped. As it turned out later, there were cracks up to two centimeters wide in the walls.

As it turned out, there was no connection only because the telephone operators, like other Petropavlovsk residents, left their jobs in panic during the earthquake. When the shaking of the earth's bowels, and with it the shaking of legs caused by severe fright, stopped, people returned. The connection worked. Calls began to ring in the reception area of the regional committee.

The shipyard called. They reported that the water supply was damaged and the water supply had to be turned off. There was equipment displacement in the workshops. The shipyard administration decided to stop the night shift, and the workers were organized into teams to eliminate accidents.

IN seaport The piers have shifted slightly and cracked. Partial destruction and displacement of berths were also observed at the fishing port. Some of them developed bulges and cracks up to 8 centimeters wide. In the first minutes of the earthquake, water spread over the piers. Strong waves tore off moored boats and kungas. Several stacks of cargo fell apart. The water supply broke in four places.

There have also been reports that in some residential buildings the city's stoves and pipes collapsed, glass flew out of the windows. By the way, ichthyologist scientist Innokenty Aleksandrovich Polutov describes this earthquake this way: “Our service shepherd dog Indus, who usually slept under the table in a city house, woke me up all night under the tsunami, and I, not knowing the reasons, took her outside, and so on until dawn The earthquake started around four o'clock in the morning."

While the duty officer was answering the phone and recording incoming information, secretaries and employees were gathering in the regional committee. The same thing happened in the regional executive committee, in institutions and enterprises. Petropavlovsk could no longer sleep. And low-power tremors continued every now and then, frightening people.

The head of the regional communications department, Poshekhonov, sent an urgent telegram to the village of Klyuchi, in the central part of the Kamchatka Peninsula, where the volcanological station was located. At the request of the leaders of the Kamchatka region - the first secretary of the regional committee P. N. Solovyov and the chairman of the regional executive committee A. F. Spasenykh, he asked volcanologists about the forecast for the further development of the earthquake. At the Petropavlovsk seismic station they could not say anything about this, since their seismographs, designed to record a maximum eight-magnitude earthquake, went off scale from the first night tremors, and scientists not only could not give any short-term forecast, but also did not know the characteristics of the element . “More than eight points” is how they approximately estimated the power of the earthquake. No one knew that it was not recorded at all in Klyuchi, since the seismographs had previously been removed for preventative repairs. Thus, the earthquake of November 5, 1952 remained with an approximate characteristic of “more than 8 points.” Later, a group of scientists led by Professor E.F. Savarensky tried to summarize all the available information. They came to the conclusion that the amount of energy released by the earthquake was many times greater than the Ashgabat earthquake of 1948. The nature of soil vibrations in various parts of Kamchatka and the Northern Kuril Islands made it possible to assert that the source of the earthquake was at a depth not exceeding 20-30 km. (?) The exceptionally high intensity of the earthquake and the tsunami generated by it indicated significant disturbances in the topography of the ocean floor in the epicentral zone. The point on the Kamchatka coastline closest to the epicenter is Cape Shipunsky, the distance to it is 140 km. The distance to Petropavlovsk-on-Kamchatka is 200 km, and to Severo-Kurilsk – about 350 km. Only due to the distance of the epicenter from the coast and the shallow depth of the source, the earthquake was not accompanied by more significant destruction.

At 5:20 a.m., the duty officer at the Kamchatka Regional Committee of the CPSU received a message that a big disaster had happened in the village of Khalaktyrka, which was located on the ocean shore twenty kilometers from Petropavlovsk. It was reported that the village was flooded, there was destruction and casualties.

On the instructions of the first secretary, the duty officer called the head of the MGB department for the Kamchatka region, A.E. Chernoshtan, to the regional committee to check this information.

By this time, all the top leaders of the region and large enterprises had already gathered in the regional committee. It was decided to create a headquarters from members of the bureau of the regional party committee to coordinate emergency work. Subsequently, the headquarters was renamed the regional commission. It was chaired by the first secretary of the regional committee, P. N. Solovyov. The commission included the chairman of the regional executive committee A.F. Spasenykh, the 2nd secretary of the regional party committee V.I. Alekseev, the head of the MGB department for the Kamchatka region A.E. Chernoshtan, the head of the Main Directorate of Chattrybprom A.T. Sidorenko.

The first thing the commission did was to give instructions to put all means of rescue in enterprises and buildings on constant readiness. military units areas. Then on the radio she addressed the population of Petropavlovsk with a call for calm. In addition, it was recommended that people inspect stoves before lighting them.

After this, Spasyonykh and Alekseev immediately went by car to Khalaktyrka.

About three dozen families lived in this small, ancient Kamchadal village, located on the ocean shore. Almost all adults worked in the fishing cooperative. It was led by Mikhail Trofimovich Skomorokhov.

At night, the residents of the village were also awakened by an earthquake. Having run out of the houses, they soon became convinced that nothing terrible had happened - there was no destruction, people were alive. But they were in no hurry to return to warm homes. And they did the right thing - soon a loud noise was heard from the ocean. The indigenous inhabitants of Kamchatka, they immediately realized that a big wave was coming.

Skomorokhov gave the command to run to the hill rising behind the village. Having released the cattle from the barns, grabbed the children and the most valuable belongings, the villagers ran to the hill. Behind them, a wave rolled onto the shore with a roar.

She didn’t have time to catch up with the people, but she brought great destruction to the village. The smokehouse, caviar and salting barns were completely washed away, four houses were destroyed, and six more were severely damaged. In addition, the water in the Khalaktyrka River rose, demolished the wooden bridge, and the residents of the village found themselves sandwiched between the river and the ocean. The panic began. Fortunately, the height of subsequent tsunami waves decreased, but fear remained in people.

Two or three hours later, cars appeared on the other side of the river. It was the secretary of the regional party committee Alekseev, the chairman of the regional executive committee of Spasyonnykh, and behind them the border guards. They shouted to the residents of Khalaktyrka that they would immediately begin to build a pontoon bridge and save everyone. This calmed people down somewhat.

Soon, sappers arrived and construction of the pontoon bridge began. When the work was almost finished, the water in the river began to decrease sharply. The ocean swell also calmed down.

State security operative junior lieutenant Ivan Efremov and policeman Ivan Gromov registered the people and checked them with the list of the village council. One family was missing, consisting of a husband, wife and four-year-old child. They were soon found dead, drowned in the water. They turned out to be the first victims they learned about in Petropavlovsk. But almost immediately news came that at the southernmost tip of Kamchatka, Cape Lopatka, two border patrols of four people had been washed into the sea. No one could be found.

And at the entrance to Avacha Bay, several sailors and officers were washed away. True, they survived by grabbing onto the floating debris of coastal buildings. Military boats quickly managed to pick up everyone.

In Petropavlovsk in these early hours of November 5th they still did not know about terrible tragedies, which took place in the villages of the eastern coast of Kamchatka, as well as on the islands of Paramushir and Shumshu of the North Kuril archipelago.

One of the northernmost points of the eastern coast of Kamchatka, where the tsunami waves reached, was Olga Bay in Kronotsky Bay. Here, between the mouths of the Olga and Tatyana rivers, the village of Kronoki was located, on the outskirts of which, near the ocean, was the coastal management of the Bogachevskaya geological exploration expedition.

Shortly before the earthquake, the Saltykov-Shchedrin steamship arrived to the geologists. They managed to take food, drilling equipment, three new STZ-NATI tractors, various technical and Construction Materials, special clothing, timber for the construction of standard houses, more than two thousand barrels for fuel. Ten Kungas, three S-80 tractors and two ZIS-151 trucks were unloading. The head of the expedition, Vladimir Aleksandrovich Pervago, personally supervised the unloading.

We went to bed very late. And at 4 o’clock in the morning, construction timber and barrels scattered from the stacks began to rumble. Frightened people jumped out of houses and tents, ran along the shore with lanterns, checking the cargo. When they more or less calmed down, the first wave of the tsunami hit...

The head of the expedition, Pervago, was inside the food warehouse at that time. The impact of the wave on the plank walls forced him and the worker who ran in with him to jump out. They were immediately caught by the fast current of water flowing into the sea and carried into the darkness. The worker, choking, kept grabbing Pervago's hands, but soon he himself clung to either a tractor standing on the shore, or a pile of drill pipes, after which he managed to catch the boss, so their rapid movement into the roaring ocean stopped. Salty water overwhelmed both of them, rolled over their heads, tore their arms and legs, but they managed to hold on. My mind was already clouded, my arm muscles were weakening, when the water suddenly disappeared, leaving behind dirty foam. Having caught their breath and come to their senses, people began to hastily leave the shore, going to the high river terraces. Everyone understood that others would inevitably come after the first wave.

When dawn broke, the tired and frozen people realized that the ocean had calmed down and they could go down to the village. We walked cautiously, encountering heaps of garbage, uprooted bushes, and mountains of washed-up earth along the way. On the site of the village lay pitiful ruins. There were no three warehouses filled with food and equipment at all, just as there were no three residential buildings and tents. The timber and barrels were carried into the ocean. Tractors, cars, kungas and ten metal tanks with fuel and lubricants were severely damaged. True, the steamer "Saltykov-Shchedrin" was in place and gave loud, drawn-out whistles.

There was a lot of different debris floating near the shore. In addition, it was assumed that some of the people could have been carried into the ocean, so the head of the expedition decided to examine the garbage and coastal waters. Fortunately, the motor boat "Iceberg" remained intact, on which the foreman of the boat Tarasov and Pervago himself immediately went to sea. They managed to find several dead bodies.

It was soon established that nine people had died: driller Maistrenko, kungas worker Subtilny and his four children, the wife and child of turner Parshin, as well as a woman who remained forever unknown, who arrived on the expedition for work.

In the village of Kronoki itself, two people went missing. The wave demolished two residential buildings and a store, and damaged the first aid station.

On the shore of Morzhovaya Bay, located in the northern part of the Shipunsky Peninsula, there was a village of Aleut whalers, in which several families remained for the winter. Here the tsunami destroyed absolutely all houses and industrial buildings. People caught in the waves were carried into the ocean. The adults managed to hold on and then get out into the shallow water, but the children did not have enough strength for this. After the survivors gathered together, mournful cries were heard over the bay. These were distraught parents mourning their missing children. The head of the base, Druzhinin, lost all his children, except for his eldest daughter, who lived in a boarding school in the village of Zhupanovo.

There was no communication, and the base workers did not know that they were not the only ones who survived the disaster. It seemed to them that God was angry only with them. After consulting, they decided that the strongest of the men, Beloshitsky, would go 18 kilometers to the weather station on Cape Shipunsky, from there to report by radio to Petropavlovsk about what had happened. Half-naked, cold, hungry, he set out on the road without hesitation. There was no road to the weather station, so I walked directly, through the mountains and along river valleys.

The beginning of November in this part of Kamchatka is already almost winter. There was no need to be afraid of bears, which wander here in herds in the summer. However, the predators were also driven out of their dens by the night earthquake. One such poor fellow stood in the way of Beloshitsky. He got scared and climbed onto the rock. The stones were just covered with snow and covered with a layer of ice. The leg slipped, there was nothing to grab onto with his hands, and Beloshitsky flew down. He fell so hard that he lost consciousness. When I woke up, I discovered that my head, arms and legs were badly damaged. My bruised chest hurt. I tried to get up, but the pain in my legs and hypochondrium prevented me from doing so. In addition, my head was very dizzy. And then he crawled. Later he broke the stick and walked leaning on it.

In the middle of the day, bloodied, tired, and in a semi-fainting state, he stumbled into the weather station. The frightened meteorologists listened to him, then gave him strong tea, helped him wash, and bandaged his wounds. Immediately a radiogram was broadcast to Petropavlovsk: “Morzhovo people are in distress. One person arrived at the post in serious condition. There are victims, wounded. There is nothing except linen, they need help. Post Shipunsky.”

South of Cape Shipunsky, at the mouth of the Nalycheva River, there was a village of the same name, in which there was a branch of the fishing artel named after Lenin. 39 people lived here.

The very first wave of the tsunami broke and washed into the sea all residential buildings with the exception of two. People ran to higher ground, beyond the estuary. But the water overtook five and carried them away. They all died.

The survivors - barefoot and half naked - came to the border post, located six kilometers from the village. The outpost was not damaged by the tsunami. Its chief, Eliseev, received and accommodated the people.

Severo-Kurilsk is located on the shore of the narrow and not very deep Second Kuril Strait, which separates the island of Paramushir, on which the city is located, and the island of Shumshu. Towards the Pacific Ocean, the strait expands somewhat, forming a kind of funnel, sandwiched by rocky shores. The tsunami rushed into this funnel, and the more it narrowed, the higher the waves rose and their destructive power increased. That is why Severo-Kurilsk received the most powerful blow compared to other settlements caught in the tsunami zone. As a result, the city was completely destroyed.

Severo-Kurilsk was built by the Japanese in 1940-43. It was a small fishing town called Kashiwabara. In it, the Japanese located the main fisheries management office on the North Kuril Islands. In August 1945, the islands were transferred to us again. There were many Japanese villages on the coast, and all of them began to be settled by Soviet fishermen and military personnel. The Japanese also lived here for some time, but soon they were all evicted. The center of the new North Kuril region of Yuzhno- Sakhalin region The USSR became the former Kashiwabara, called North Kuril.

The Severo-Kurilsk Local History Museum houses a photo album made by documentary filmmaker Boris Vasilievich Prokakhin in 1946. All photographs in the album are dedicated to the city of that time. Perhaps this is the only thing left of a city that no longer exists. But then, in 1946, he had just begun to rebuild in the Russian way, and the people in the photographs are still alive and happy with the happiness of new settlers. They build a city, a stadium, barracks, fish, explore their island, play sports, and soldiers do drill training. There are smiles on their faces.

That autumn of 1946, Boris Prokahin was filming the film “Kuril Islands” and at the same time took many photographs. The album is made from them.

The current Severo-Kurilsk, rebuilt after the tragedy of 1952, is located in a different place - on a hill and further from the sea. And there are almost no traces left of the old city. “Over there, where the barns are now, there was a stadium,” say the North Kuril residents, pointing to a vacant lot located between the modern city and the sea. The stadium was large, with high stands and concrete gates in the Soviet retro style.

Perhaps all that remains from those times is a monument to the Hero Soviet Union Senior Lieutenant S.A. Savushkin, who died during the capture of the Kuril Islands by Soviet troops. The monument tilted under the blows of the waves, but stood firm. He is alone and reminiscent of the time “before the tsunami”. And, of course, it remains in people’s memory. Every year on November 5, residents of Severo-Kurilsk hold a funeral meeting at the cemetery, at which the few witnesses to those terrible events speak.

On the fateful night of November 4–5, 1952, at about 4 a.m. local time, city residents were awakened by a strong earthquake. Dishes fell onto the floor, light bulbs and lampshades swayed, chimneys collapsed, doors opened, glass burst in the windows. People jumped out into the streets. Fortunately, the weather was unusually warm, only here and there were spots of snow that had fallen the day before glowing. The moon was shining in the sky. Having managed to get used to fairly frequent shaking during their time on the island, people quickly calmed down, especially since no major destruction was visible. After wandering around in the fresh air, many returned to their warm beds, yawning.

The earth continued to shake slightly when the head of the North Kuril police department, senior lieutenant of state security P. M. Deryabin, went to the regional department to check on the prisoners languishing in the bullpen. There were 22 of them. “On the way to the district department, I observed cracks in the ground ranging from 5 to 20 centimeters in size, formed as a result of the earthquake,” he would later write in his report. “Arriving at the district department, I saw that the building had been broken into two halves by the earthquake, the stoves had crumbled, the duty squad is on the ground. At this time there were no more shocks, the weather was very calm."

Tamara Nikolaevna Avliyarova was then 14 years old, she lived in a boarding school in Severo-Kurilsk. “The earthquake woke us up,” she writes. “At first our teacher decided that we wouldn’t go anywhere, we’d wait until it was all over. Whoever was wearing what, we ran out into the street. The earthquake, of course, was terrible...”

About 45 minutes after the earthquake, a strong roar was heard from the ocean. “Looking around, we saw a great height of water advancing from the sea onto the island,” police chief P. M. Deryabin continues his report. “Since the regional department was located at a distance of 150 m from the sea, and the bullpen was about 50 m from the sea, then immediately the bullpen became the first victim of the water... I gave the order to open fire from personal weapons and shout “Water is coming!”, at the same time retreating to the hills. Hearing the noise and screams, people began to run out of the apartments in what they were wearing (most of them in their underwear, barefoot). ) and run to the hills."

… “And then a rumor reached us: water!” says Avliyarova. “I must say that the boarding school was located quite close to the port, now in this place is the Geothermika garage. At that point we started to run. I remember how I ran with everyone in the direction of the Fifth Hill. Soldiers in underpants were running ahead of me, and I myself didn’t have time to properly dress. But it was already very cold, and in some places there was snow. Most of the people who had left the dying city gathered on the Fifth Hill.”

It seemed to people that their island was sinking into the depths of the sea - the water rushing onto the land was so high. Grabbing the children, people ran to the hills. But the wave was already destroying the first buildings, drowning out the screams of the drowning people with the crash.

A few minutes later the wave subsided back into the sea, taking with it everything destroyed, as well as hundreds of victims. She left the shore so quickly that the bottom of the strait was exposed, shining in moonlight from numerous puddles and wet stones. And immediately there was an ominous silence. The frightened residents of Severo-Kurilsk did not yet know that there would be a second wave, more powerful, higher and more destructive. After waiting for some time, they began to fearfully descend from the hills to see what had become of their homes. And, of course, find out what happened to their relatives and friends who remained in the city or fell behind during the run.

The second wave hit about 20 minutes after the first. “A menacing water shaft 10-15 meters high was rapidly rolling along the strait,” says the certificate of the deputy chief of the Sakhalin regional police department, Lieutenant Colonel Smirnov, who arrived on the island as part of a commission immediately after the disaster and conducted a detailed interview of witnesses. “The shaft with noise and roar struck the northeastern ledge of the Paramushir island in the area of the city of Severo-Kurilsk. Having broken against it, one wave rolled further along the strait in a northwestern direction, destroying coastal buildings on the Shumshu and Paramushir islands along the way, and the other, describing an arc along the way. The North Kuril Lowland in a south-eastern direction fell on the city of Severo-Kurilsk. It rotated furiously around the depression, with rapid, convulsive jerks, washing away to the ground all the buildings and structures located in the area 10 - 15 meters above sea level. the water shaft in its rapid movement was so huge that small in size but heavy in weight objects - machines installed on rubble bases, one and a half ton safes, tractors, cars - were torn from their places, circling in the whirlpool along with wooden objects, and then scattered over a huge area or carried into the strait."

This second wave was not only powerful, but also insidious. She, retreating with the same force with which she surged onto the shore, struck the rear of the city. It began to roll down into the valley of the stream, which divided Severo-Kurilsk into two parts, approximately in the middle. Rapidly going down, the water formed a huge whirlpool, into which people weakened in the unequal struggle were sucked. Hundreds of them were sucked in. In addition, the water hit the coastal rampart in front of the seaport, destroying it and throwing fishing vessels, boats and barges into the strait.

“This wave destroyed the entire city and killed most of the population,” writes M. P. Deryabin. “Before the water of the second wave had receded, the water poured in for the third time and carried almost everything that was from the buildings in the city into the sea... The Strait ", separating the islands of Paramushir and Shumshu, was completely filled with floating houses, roofs and other debris. The surviving people, frightened by what was happening, threw their things in panic and, losing their children, rushed to run higher into the mountains."

Those who had fled from the first wave to the Fifth Hill and remained there peered in fear into the pre-dawn darkness, trying to understand what was happening below, in the city. And there - “it was pitch black, it was impossible to really see anything, only the darkness that enveloped the city and the sound of water” (T. N. Avliyarova).

Police Lieutenant Colonel Smirnov: “Despite the tragedy of this disaster, the vast majority of the population did not lose their heads; moreover, in the most critical moments, many nameless heroes performed sublime heroic deeds: risking their lives, they saved children, women, and the elderly. Here are two girls leading an old woman by the arm. Pursued by the approaching wave, they try to run faster to the hill. The old woman, exhausted, falls to the ground in exhaustion. But the girls, through the noise and roar of the approaching elements, shout to her: “We won’t leave you anyway, let them all drown together.” the old woman in their arms and try to run, but at that moment the oncoming wave picks them up and throws them all together onto a hill. They are saved.

Losev's mother and young daughter, fleeing on the roof of their house, were thrown into the strait by a wave. Calling for help, they were noticed by people on the hill. Soon there, not far from the swimming Losevs, a little girl was seen on the board; as it later turned out, three-year-old Svetlana Embankment miraculously escaped, who then disappeared and then reappeared on the crest of the wave. From time to time she tucked her brown hair, blown by the wind, back with her little hand, which indicated that the girl was alive. At this time, the strait was completely filled with floating boards, roofs, various demolished property and especially fishing gear, interfering with the navigation of boats. The first attempts to break through on boats were unsuccessful - continuous rubble prevented progress, and fishing gear got wrapped around the propellers. But then a boat separated from the shore of Shumshu Island and slowly made its way forward through the rubble. Here he approaches the floating roof, the boat crew quickly removes the Losevs, and then carefully removes Svetlana from the board. The people who had been watching them with bated breath breathed a sigh of relief. Only during the period of the attack on the city of Severo-Kurilsk, the population and command of various watercraft picked up and rescued more than 15 children lost by their parents, 192 people were removed from roofs and other floating objects in the Strait, the Sea of Okhotsk and the ocean.”

The disaster deafened the majority of the population of the destroyed city. Of the surviving residents, there were few who would not have lost their loved ones. People became depressed. And in place of the city, a real wasteland formed.

Soon reconnaissance planes from Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky appeared over the island. They examined the area, took photographs, and sent instructions on how to send various signals from the ground. This somewhat brought people back to reality and inspired hope for a possible speedy end to the sorrows and troubles that had befallen them.

On the ocean side of Paramushir Island there were several residential villages - Shkilevo, Baza Boevaya, Podgorny, Okeansky, Galkino, Pribrezhny, Kamenny, Reefovy, Levashovo, Ozerny, Utesny, Savushkino (in the strait, at the exit to the Sea of Okhotsk), Putyatino (a little further than Savushkino ).

All these villages also fell into the tsunami zone. Shkilevo, located in the very south of the island, behind Cape Count Vasiliev, was not damaged, and none of the 12 residents died. The Combat base was mothballed even before the disaster; there were no people there. The village is completely destroyed. Podgorny housed a whaling plant and was home to more than 500 people. The village was destroyed, 97 residents survived. Galkino was completely destroyed, but the population managed to escape. The same thing happened in Pribrezhnoye and Kamennoye. In Rifovoye there were also no casualties, but residential buildings and industrial buildings were washed into the ocean. Levashovo was washed away, but people remained alive. About a hundred people lived in Utyosnoye, the village was destroyed, but there were no casualties.

There were great casualties in Shelekhovo. A large fish processing plant was located here and more than 800 people lived here. There were 102 survivors. The village itself was almost undamaged.

Savushkino, or Avangard, is a settlement of military personnel and fish processors. It was located on Cape Ovalny. There is no destruction or casualties here, fortunately. did not take place.

There is a separate story about the village of Okeanskoye. It was located in the bay of the same name on a low, sandy shore at the foot of a small, lonely hill called Dunkina by the residents. The population of Okeanskoye was more than a thousand people; people were employed in the fish processing plant, caviar and canning factories. A fairly comfortable village - with a power plant, mechanic workshops, industrial refrigerators, a school, a hospital, etc. In addition, there was a large herd of cattle. Warehouses were filled with food before winter. For example, several hundred tons of flour, tens of tons of cereals, oats, and dozens of barrels of alcohol are listed.

The village was founded by the Japanese. It was a center for fishing and processing of catches on the ocean shore of Paramushir. Fishing here was good, the fish factory, which had become Russian, flourished. The Russians also received a major stone pier from the Japanese. It served as a breakwater, protecting the bay from ocean waves. Two more piers were built next to it, but they were light and temporary. It was the watchman who was the first to notice the approaching tsunami wave. A huge, roaring shaft, glistening angrily in the moonlight with millions of splashes of water.

The shaft rolled obliquely towards the shore, so the good-quality Japanese pier could not withstand the side impact of the water and literally crumbled into separate concrete blocks. These huge, heavy blocks were scattered along the shore like pebbles.

Almost immediately, a wave hit the factory floors of a large cannery and completely destroyed it in a matter of seconds. When the wave passed, all that was left of the plant were the grease boilers and seaming machines.

Later, the tragic fate of Okeansky was described in detail by the Kuril local historian, a former deviator from Severo-Kurilsk, S. Antonenko. His essay "Ocean" was published in the newspaper "Kuril Fisherman" in 1990. The author received great assistance in collecting materials from the former chairman of the Okeansky Village Council, Elena Mikhailovna Melnikova and former director of the local fish processing plant, Mikhail Aleksandrovich Bernikov.

“The Melnikovs’ house stood at the very foot of Dunkina Hill,” writes S. Antonenko in an essay. “All its inhabitants, who went out into the yard after being awakened by powerful tremors, saw the entire village and the buildings of the fish processing plant somewhat from above. They had a good view of the the expanse of the ocean, stretching as far as the eye could see, to the very horizon. The earthquake, surpassing in strength all that had hitherto disturbed the island land, woke up all the inhabitants of the village, people came up to each other, shared their impressions, wondering what could follow. , who has something in their house that has fallen or fallen apart...

The director of the fish factory, like the others, after the first tremors of the earthquake, left the house outside... Bernikov immediately realized the full danger of what was happening and began to wake up the sleeping people with loud shouts, urging them to quickly and without hesitation leave their homes into the open sky. But not everyone heeded his calls..."

The impact of the first tsunami wave was terrible. S. Antonenko describes it this way:

“Water! Ocean! Wave! Look!” alarming and loud exclamations scattered through the air. But the noise that filled everything around drowned out these belated screams. Some of the people rushing around the barracks rushed to run away from the shore, some, having jumped inside, doomed building, tried to snatch his children, who were in a sweet sleep, out of bed, someone screamed heart-rendingly, trying to wake up those who were still sleeping in their rooms...

These were the last moments of the nightmare that was now ending many human lives. And now a multi-kilometer-long water shaft, boiling and swirling with terrible strands of foam, collapsed onto the shore and absorbed everything that, just a fraction of a second ago, was living, breathing, screaming and rushing about in the last hope...

Confused and frightened people ran in all directions. Some ran upstairs, others circled around their houses in confusion, trying to do something, save someone, do something. Still others, confused, ran down into the valley. Many, not yet recovered from the recently subsided tremors, were afraid to run to where Bernikov called them - to the Dunkina Hill, which is now the only place of salvation. And they were afraid because they knew about the former Japanese artillery depot with a huge supply of aerial bombs and artillery shells located in its thickness.”

Dunkina Hill was the only elevation in this area. But its foot was surrounded by a wide, vertical ditch 3 to 5 meters deep - the so-called counter-scarp, dug by the Japanese as part of the security system for an ammunition depot located in an underground warehouse. Part of this ammunition, according to the residents of Paramushir, lies there to this day; local hunters extract gunpowder from the shells. And then the warehouse was full, so the security system was kept in relative good order. The people who ran to Dunkina Hill ran into a ditch, unable to overcome it. And the wave overtook. Many died in front of the ditch or inside it, climbing up the steep wall.

But most people remained in the village, many never left their homes. All of them, with very rare exceptions, died. When, after the first wave had left, the director of the fish factory went downstairs to go to the radio station and report to Severo-Kurilsk about what had happened, he did not find not only his office, but also the hospital attached to it. And there were people in the hospital, including several women in labor. Everyone was swallowed up by the ocean.

And yet someone was found among the rubble. Many were already dead, some choked in the water, some crushed by debris, including the bodies of the chief engineer of the fish processing plant, Kalmykov, and deputy director Mikhailov. But there were also wounded. They began to be carried upstairs to the house of the chairman of the village council, Melnikova. A second, more powerful wave caught people doing this activity. She completely destroyed the village and factories and took several more victims. The grandmother and girls Katya, Tanya and Zhenya from the family of Captain Novak died. The entire family of the foreman of the fishing department Popov with three children died, the teacher Taisiya Alekseevna Rezanova died with her three children, the entire family of the worker Sharygin died, from the large Nevorotov family only the mother, Nina Vasilievna, remained alive... In total, 460 dead were later counted in Okeanskoye. This is according to official data, but people believe that much more died, because many delayed seasonal workers were not registered with the village council, and the papers of the factories and fish processing plant were carried into the ocean.

“Many people were washed up onto a spit that protruded several hundred meters into the ocean in the southwestern part of the bay,” writes S. Antonenko. “Undressed and half-frozen, maddened by the cold and everything that had happened, they, clinging to the slippery, cold stones, screamed and begged for help, but it’s unlikely that any of them managed to wait for it. They froze on the icy rocks of the spit. Others, trying to swim to the shore, also died, and only a few of them may have been among those. who was later rescued by the Zh-220 boat that arrived from Galkino.”

Shumshu Island, closest to the Kamchatka Peninsula, unlike neighboring Paramushir, is almost flat and low-lying, without large vegetation. But the banks are high. A large number of military units were stationed on the island, and on the ocean side there were the fishing villages of Babushkino, Dyakovo, and Kozyrevsky. The largest village was Kozyrevsky, where there were two fish factories and more than a thousand people lived. Both factories were destroyed, but people, with the exception of 10 people, managed to escape into the tundra.

In Babushkino, in the very south of the island, there was also a fish factory. More than 500 people lived in the village. Two old-timers of the village, Maria Dmitrievna Annenkova and Ulyana Markovna Velichko, both women born in 1928, spoke about how the tsunami was suffered there in 2001. Ulyana Markovna Velichko arrived in Babushkino with her parents on June 18, 1950. That same year, in the fall, she got married. My husband served on the island, and when he was demobilized, he decided to stay and got a job in a fish factory. In 1951, their daughter was born.

The village of Babushkino is on a high bank, above the ocean. Below, under the coastal cliff, there is all the production that remains from the Japanese - a fish processing plant, a cannery, a caviar workshop, two large refrigerators.

“We lived in a barracks, my parents were behind the wall,” says Ulyana Markovna. – About a month before the tsunami there was an earthquake. The barracks are Japanese, old, all our stoves are gone. We just repaired them and settled in...”

“There was a lot of fish that year,” recalls Maria Dmitrievna Annenkova, who came to Babushkino in 1952 as a recruit from the town of Arsenyev, Primorsky Territory. “At first, we seasonal fish were kept on cod, then we started eating red fish. I started working in the caviar workshop, we didn’t sit idle, the fish kept coming and going. In October, our caviar was transported to Severo-Kurilsk and our brigade was removed and sent there to help. At the end of October we managed, it was time to return to Babushkino. And then a snowstorm blew in, and we couldn’t get to our island for two weeks. Finally, on November 4, we were taken home. We landed in the evening, and at night this terrible tragedy happened.”

When it shook at night, November 5, the inhabitants of the barracks in which the family of Ulyana Markovna Velichko lived jumped up. Velichko's stove fell apart again. The husband only managed to put on one boot, picked up his daughter in his arms and ran out of the house. “Many families lived in the barracks, but there were only two doors,” says Ulyana Markovna. - We barely made it out. We kept a cow, so we put a stack of hay in the yard. It was dark, only the ground lightly dusted with snow was white. The whole barracks of us huddled near this stack and stood there, peering into the dark sea rustling below.”

“I lived in a Japanese half-dugout with a young literature teacher,” continues the story of M.D. Annenkova. – We woke up from the earthquake. It was dark and scary. We put pillows on our heads so that the ceiling wouldn’t crush us if anything happened, and started singing “Our formidable “Varyag” does not surrender to the enemy... We were young. Moreover, it had shaken more than once, we knew what it was. We heard: noise on street, people were screaming. Then we ran into the street too.”

Babushkintsev was saved by the high bank. All industrial buildings located below, under the shore, were destroyed and washed away. But the residential village was practically undamaged. People sat outside their homes until dawn, burning fires and warming themselves. And in the morning planes appeared and began dropping bags of food and medicine.

The ship "Vychegda" left the port of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky on November 1. He was supposed to go around Kamchatka from the south and arrive in the village of Ozernovsky, where he was carrying 600 tons of food.

On the evening of November 2, the ship entered the First Kuril Strait. It got dark. The weather suddenly deteriorated and a northeast wind blew. The radio operator brought a radiogram to Captain Smirnov, which said that a storm of up to 11-12 points was expected in the Sea of Okhotsk. In order not to take risks, the captain decided to return from the strait to the ocean and drift in the area of Cape Lopatka - the southern tip of Kamchatka.

Only two days later, on the evening of November 4, the weather improved, and the Vychegda set its course. Around one o'clock in the morning on the fateful November 5th, we passed the First Kuril Strait and entered the Sea of Okhotsk. By 4 o'clock in the morning we approached the village of Ozernovsky. At exactly four o'clock the crew felt a strong vibration of the ship's hull. It lasted 8-10 minutes. No one doubted that it was an earthquake.

At 5 hours 34 minutes, Captain Smirnov received a radiogram: “As a result of the earthquake in Severo-Kurilsk, the city went under water. I ask ships located in the Northern Kuril Islands to immediately proceed to Severo-Kurilsk to save people. Captain of the motor ship “Krasnogorsk” Belov.”

It was known that the Krasnogorsk was unloading at the roadstead of Severo-Kurilsk, so its captain, of course, was in control of the situation. Without hesitation or hesitation, Smirnov gave the command to set a course for Severo-Kurilsk. All night, while the Vychegda was rushing to help people, its crew prepared lifting devices, nets, cables and storm ladders.

At about 10 o'clock in the morning we approached the Second Kuril Strait from the north. Here we began to see logs, furniture, rags, barrels, boxes, and bags floating in the sea. The closer the ship came to the strait, the more various debris and debris floated on the water. People off duty were on deck and anxiously peered into the sea.

Soon the current carried empty, uncontrollable boats, barges and even seiners out of the strait. There was no doubt - a huge catastrophe had happened. In addition, the radio operator brought more and more alarming radiograms coming from Vladivostok and Petropavlovsk to the captains of ships located in the area. Judging by them, several steamships and warships were already hurrying to Severo-Kurilsk.

At 10:20 a.m., on one of the barges that was being carried by the current, they noticed a man waving his arms invitingly. Half an hour later, the Vychegda crew managed to take the barge into tow, and lifted the frozen, frightened sailor on board.

Not far away, two empty seiners were bobbing on the water. They seemed completely intact, so throwing them into the sea to the mercy of fate seemed to Smirnov an unforgivable luxury. He decided to take them in tow too.

At this time, the sailors discerned in the water great amount debris of houses and various belongings. All this was carried away by the current into the open sea. Then the barge and seiners were anchored, and they quickly went to the discovered wreckage. But no people were found among them.

After this, they began to enter the Second Kuril Strait in order to go to Severo-Kurilsk. Opposite Cape Chibuiny we met a seiner and two boats, half-submerged and broken on the rocks. There were no living or dead people on them or near them.

Soon the strait narrowed, and the shores of two islands opened up at once - Shumshu and Paramushir. The places flooded by the tsunami were clearly visible. They were dark from moisture, accumulated debris and destroyed vegetation. The vertical stripe reached in places up to 12 meters at average height 7-8 meters.

On the site of the village of Baykovo, located on Shumshu Island, houses located above the dark strip have been preserved. But most of the village still collapsed and was a pile of rubbish. People could be seen on the elevated parts of the shore. They were still afraid to go down to the ruins of their houses, remaining at a safe distance from the sea. Some gave summoning signs with their hands, but the islanders were in no hurry to go down to the water. It seems that no one was in charge of their rescue on the shore, and the people were left to their own devices. Surely many of them had not yet recovered from the shock; they needed medical attention. In addition, it remained unknown whether they were provided with food and clothing.

Having passed Baykovo, the Vychegda approached Severo-Kurilsk. The picture that revealed itself to the sailors shocked them. The city was in a lowland, and now it was all wiped off the face of the earth. Only a few buildings survived above the tsunami level. People, as in Baykovo, took refuge in elevated places. Only a few wandered among the ruins. Behind Cape Oporny, opposite the mouth of the Matrosskaya River, the motor ship "Krasnogorsk" was anchored.

All the water of the strait near the city was strewn with the wreckage of buildings, furniture, various utensils, half-submerged boats, cutters and kungas. A dozen boats, a fish minesweeper and two seiners floated among this garbage. They were looking for people. The most valuable property was also lifted from the water.

“Vychegda” tried to keep up everywhere, but Smirnov remained unclear who was coordinating the work here to save people and provide assistance. On this occasion, he requested a radiogram from the head of the Kamchatka-Chukotka Shipping Company P.S. Chernyaev. Soon the answer came from him: “To Smirnov. Organize the reception of people from the shore, using your boats, putting experienced rowers in them, led by your assistants. Report, have you taken any food in the hold, are you baking, is there any bread? Do you have any contact with General Duca? Yours We are satisfied with the information, continue to report the rescue situation in detail. Full information about the disaster is desirable. Please note, doctors have been airlifted to you from Chernyaev, Melnikov regional communist department."

This was already something. Now it was necessary to find General Dooku, the commander of the garrison on the island of Paramushir, on the shore.

At 13:45 local time, Smirnov radioed to Petropavlovsk: “I have no contact with the shore. There are a lot of people on the hills above the village. Apparently they are afraid to go down. Landing can be done by boats, but the current is strong, it does not give results. Notify Baykovo so that they can organize gathering of people, landing by boats and barges. Report the general’s call sign and wave. They have not yet organized themselves on the shore.”

The situation did not allow waiting for General Duca to be found on the air. Then Smirnov sent his assistant ashore to either find the general or organize the delivery of people aboard the Vychegda himself. When the assistant left on the boat, Smirnov sent another radiogram to Petropavlovsk:

“To Chernyaev. An assistant has been sent to communicate with the shore and organize the loading of passengers. The proceeding ships can be informed that no changes in the depths in the strait have been detected - the strait has been passed through twice. If there are a lot of people, I think they will put them in the aft hold on bag cargo.”

At about three o'clock in the afternoon the captain's mate arrived ashore. There were three assistant captains on the Vychegda - senior mate A. G. Shiryaev, second mate S. M. Lebedev and third mate N. A. Aleksandrov. It was not possible to determine which of them went ashore.

There was complete organizational chaos on the shore. People experienced great stress, so many tried to find oblivion in alcohol. Fortunately, shops and stalls were destroyed by water; in deep holes that turned into puddles, one could easily find a bottle or two, or even a whole barrel of alcohol. Snacks in the form of canned food and sausage sealed in barrels were also available.

Soon a rumor spread that an even higher and stronger wave was expected, up to 50 meters, so people were nervous and panicked. Having walked around the ruins that remained of their homes, picking up some things, they again hurried to climb higher into the hills. Those who managed to take a strong sip of alcohol were no longer afraid of anything.

People also said that they saw among the living the head of the fleet and the chief engineer of the local fish trust, but neither one nor the other appeared on the shore. The head of the trust, Mikhail Semenovich Alperin, died, his body was found and identified. No one saw General Dooku either. They pointed to the other end of the city, where he could be, but the assistant captain of the Vychegda had no idea how to get there through the ravines and chaos of destruction.

Having with difficulty crossed to the city on a boat, the assistant clearly understood that this transport was not suitable for mass transportation of people to the ship. Firstly, the distance to the Vychegda was large, and secondly, the current in the strait was constantly changing. And people often did not agree to leave the shore, fearing for the remains of their property or simply not trusting the boat. Only young soldiers willingly climbed into the boat, who had nowhere to go anyway; no one gave them any commands, since the officers either died or were busy saving their household property.

Having achieved no result in the search for General Duka or any of the other local leaders, the assistant captain put 30 people, mostly soldiers, in the boat and set off back to the Vychegda. Individual boats also continued to deliver people to the ship, but there were very few people willing. During the day, about 150 people were brought on board.

The entire crew of the Vychegda took part in providing assistance to the rescued people. As soon as a loaded boat approached the board, sailors, led by boatswain A. Ya. Ivanov, rushed onto the deck to quickly lift the brought islanders up. They were accommodated wherever they could, even given their sleeping places and cabins. In the galley, cook A.N. Krivogornitsyn and baker D.A. Yuryeva worked tirelessly, trying to feed, give tea, and warm tired and hungry people without delay. The drivers and stokers of the night watch did not go away to rest, knowing that their shifts were working on deck. In the absence of a doctor on the ship, first aid to the wounded was provided as best they could by the barmaid A.P. Tolysheva, the orderly S.S. Makarenko, the cleaner L.R. Trotskaya and the sailor A.I. Kuznetsov. The head of the ship's radio station, A. I. Mironov, and radio operator V. P. Plakhotko were constantly in touch. “We need a doctor, we urgently need a doctor,” they kept broadcasting the captain’s radiograms.

And other ships that happened to be nearby on that alarming morning were already hurrying to Severo-Kurilsk at full speed.

The scale of the tragedy that unfolded on the southeastern coast of Kamchatka and the northern Kuril Islands finally became clear by noon on November 5th. There was practically no settlement left in this territory that would not have been destroyed. In addition to what was described above, tsunami waves hit Kamchatka villages in Malaya Sarannaya, Vilyuy, Malaya Zhirovaya and Bolshaya Zhirovaya bays, the Ministry of Internal Affairs fish base in Khodutka Bay, and the weather station at Cape Pirates. Even in the south of the western, Sea of Okhotsk coast of Kamchatka, in the village of Ozernovsky, a large wave was observed. And almost everywhere, except for Ozernovsky and Khodutka, there was destruction and casualties. ABOUT large quantities the dead were reported from Bolshaya Zhirovaya Bay, where 81 people were missing. In Malaya Zhirovaya, 33 people died, in Saranaya and Vilyuy bays a total of 29 people died. In Severo-Kurilsk, the victims generally numbered in the thousands.

The operational headquarters established in Petropavlovsk worked in enhanced mode. Every two hours, all commanders of large military formations gathered in the regional committee of the CPSU and reported to the commission on the work done and plans for the near future. Here actions were coordinated and decisions were made that were binding on everyone.

The head of the transport department of the Kamchatka Regional Committee of the CPSU V.Z. Melnikov coordinated constant radio communication with all ships located in the disaster zone. Each ship was given an individual task to rescue people. The actions of the ships assigned to Vladivostok were also coordinated by radio with the headquarters created there. And yet there were not enough ships, many places on the Kamchatka coast remained unexplored. Then it was decided to send military aircraft from the air corps of General Gribakin on reconnaissance.

The planes examined the eastern coast of Kamchatka from Cape Kronotsky in the north to Cape Lopatka in the south. Having compared the pilots' reports, one could confidently speak about the height of the tsunami. The maximum wave height was 12 meters and was observed on the Shipunsky Peninsula, 7-8 meters in the area of Cape Povorotny, 5 meters in other places on the coast.

In addition to reconnaissance flights, the planes delivered doctors, clothing, and food to individual disaster zones.

In the afternoon, a radiogram arrived from Moscow from the Minister of the Armed Forces of the USSR, Marshal A. M. Vasilevsky. He reported that he was entrusting the general management of the rescue operations to Admiral Kholostyakov, but before his arrival at the site from Vladivostok, command should be assumed by the commander of the Kamchatka military flotilla, Rear Admiral L.N. Panteleev. An hour after receiving the radiogram, the destroyer Bystry, with the rear admiral on board, left Petropavlovsk for Severo-Kurilsk. A radiogram was broadcast: “To all ships located in the area of Severo-Kurilsk, also the Kuril Islands. Vladivostok to Savinov, Serykh. Panteleev has been appointed to lead the government. Carry out his orders unquestioningly.”

And in Petropavlovsk, work continued to collect information from disaster sites and prepare ships to go to certain areas. All this work was carried out by the head of the Kamchatka-Chukotka Shipping Company P.S. Chernyaev, the head of the Petropavlovsk seaport A. G. Mirzabeyli and the head of the fleet department of the Glavkamchatrybprom V. Ya. Dodonov. With a tough, strong-willed order, they managed to prepare more than a dozen different ships for departure.

There were also street spies who collected other types of information around the city - about people’s moods, about possible alarmists and saboteurs. Here is a document reflecting this secret work:

"To the Secretary of the Kamchatka Regional Committee of the CPSU, Comrade Solovyov.

Here.

Special message.

In connection with the earthquake that occurred on November 5, 1952 and the continuation of minor tremors to the present day, among the population of the mountains. In Petropavlovsk, panicky and sometimes provocative rumors are spreading on a large scale.

A separate, more backward part of the population, frightened by what happened, intends to leave Kamchatka in the near future; some are already selling their houses. This is especially the case in shipyards.

The degree of panic is evidenced by such facts when residents of the village of Industrialny, living in houses close to the sea, go at night to relatives or friends living in houses built on the slopes of the mountains.

The phenomenon has also become widespread throughout the city when residents, expecting a possible repetition of strong tremors, dress their children at night, sleep dressed themselves and are ready to run to the mountains at the slightest alarm.

Such a situation naturally negatively affects the production activities of a significant part of the workers.

Here are some panicky statements from townspeople. The senior mechanic of the Kamchatrybfleet, Vigursky V.P., in the presence of a number of people on November 5, 1952, stated: “Even if Kamchatka fails, there’s still no use from it, just loss and torment for people. We don’t see a white light on it, there’s absolutely nothing to eat.” nothing, the climate is bad. People don’t live, they suffer.”

Mr. Polypchuk, living on the street. Ryabikovskaya, 41, apt. 8, stated the following about the earthquake: “I thought that the house would fall apart. It turns out that the volcano exploded. The Kuril Islands sank, many soldiers died, they were brought to Kamchatka not alive. Ships and planes with doctors went from us to save people.”

Gr-ka Sumina A. Ya., living on the street. Sovetskaya, 63 said: “One island was flooded in the North Kuril Islands. From there they brought people undressed, and some killed and wounded. Mom didn’t want to leave Kamchatka, but now she keeps saying: let’s leave. We expect death every minute. But not only we will perish, all of Kamchatka will perish."

The seaport winchman N.S. Krylov stated regarding the disaster: “An underwater volcano exploded, half of one island was torn off and drowned in the sea. Many people died. They say that only corpses, trees and houses float on the sea.”

Timekeeper of Stroytrest No. 6 Blinova T.I. said: “The Avachinsky volcano is expected to erupt, we haven’t slept for almost two weeks. Oh, how many people have died, it’s terrible! We live for one minute, that’s how I don’t want to die, I’m holding on as best I can, but my nerves are gone They can withstand it. And where the hell has taken me!”

Dispatcher of the Kamchatrybfleet Khludnev V.G. said: “The entire Zhirovaya Bay was swept away, and very few people were saved, and the children all died. The city of Severo-Kurilsk all went under water, and then when the water receded, a plain remained. Terrible victims and poor children - everyone died."

Along with these purely panicky sentiments of the population, there is evidence of hostile elements using the earthquake as a pretext for spreading provocative anti-Soviet and religious rumors. Thus, Kamchatorg toolmaker Lukyanov V.I. stated on November 5: “It was not a volcano that exploded, but an atomic bomb that was dropped on the Kuril Islands. When I served in the army in the city of Nagasaki, I witnessed how the Americans first checked atomic bomb... America is smart, all its people are smart, but we still have fools. America defeated Germany, not us. Do you remember when the press and the Government gave the slogan “Catch up and overtake America”? Have you caught up? Here is the result for you today. This is preparation for the holiday. Today we live, but tomorrow we will not be. It may be so. Death awaits us only from water. Whoever comes out of the house will also die."

Housewife Obodnikova E.I., living on the street. Stroitelnaya, house No. 65, stated: “It was shaking great, and I thought that everything would fail and collapse, but somehow it survived. This earthquake happened because people angered God - that’s what it says in the Gospel, and this is not the last earthquake, there will be more. And by the end of the century the whole earth will collapse, because many people sinned during this earthquake because some people still believe in God, and God agreed to leave them alive, but gave a warning... The earthquake happened before the holiday because. people forgot the old holidays, angered God, and celebrate new holidays. Therefore, God warned with his earthquake not to forget him.”

I am reporting the above for your information.

Head of the MGB department for the Kamchatka region Chernoshtan."

There are no words, the document is interesting. But how could it come back to haunt the people whose names are mentioned in it? Especially for the latter mentioned in it - toolmaker V.I. Lukyanov and housewife E.I. Obodnikova. After all, they fell into the category of the so-called “hostile element,” and in those years this could not easily be gotten away with and often ended in the arrest of people and their further disappearance from the face of the earth.

Reading the “special report”, you feel the hasty, sticky with sweat, not very competent hands of the external agents. They, of course, attributed a lot of nonsense from themselves, but they conveyed the essence accurately: people did not know the truth, they used rumors, speculation, and their own ideas about the nature of what happened. Nobody explained anything to them, they were forbidden to talk about the elements. Collecting information about all this almost 50 years after the incident, I am faced with sad facts when eyewitnesses of the tragedy do not have photographs of it. But many people were filming back then. The late geologist Viktor Pavlovich Zotov took photographs of the destroyed Severo-Kurilsk in the spring of 1953, but soon destroyed them. “I was afraid that they would come to check and find us,” he admitted. “After all, they knew who was on the islands after the tragedy for the count. What are you talking about! How was it possible to keep something like that without fear! But then I filmed the entire panorama of Severo-Kurilsk. That’s all.” it was obvious - I developed it and printed it, but soon I burned it..."

Anastasia Anisimovna Razdabarova worked as a photographer in Petropavlovsk since 1945. The 1952 earthquake happened before her eyes, but she did not photograph its consequences - she was wary of denunciation.

A few days after the disaster, around November 8-9, volcanologist, candidate of geological and mineralogical sciences Alexander Evgenievich Svyatlovsky answered questions from a correspondent of the Kamchatskaya Pravda newspaper, talking about the nature of the tsunami in general and specifically about the 1952 tsunami. But, alas, the conversation took place under the supervision of MGB officers; the correspondent was allowed to complete the interview in triplicate, after which he was ordered to submit them for verification. Two copies were immediately destroyed (burned), and the third was firmly placed in a secret folder. So readers did not see this information. Now that it has been declassified and can be read, you are surprised that, in principle, there is nothing secret in it, something terrible to hide from readers. On the contrary, information could calm fearful, unaware people. Here are some fragments of that interview (by the way, the word “tsunami” was spelled “tsunami”):

"Question: What caused the tidal wave that caused destruction on the Kuril Islands and on the Kamchatka coast?

Answer: The tidal wave (tsunami) was caused by an earthquake that occurred in the Pacific Ocean southeast of the city of Petropavlovsk. The earthquake occurred as a result of a sudden disturbance - a rupture of the earth's crust, under the influence of which the ocean waters formed a wave that crashed onto the shores of the islands and peninsulas surrounding the Pacific Ocean.

Question: Why did the tidal wave have destructive power in Severo-Kurilsk and in the open bays of the eastern coast of Kamchatka and was small in Petropavlovsk Bay?

Answer: Petropavlovsk is located in the depths of the bay, the entrance to which is protected by a narrow strait. The tsunami tidal wave broke at the entrance to the bay, and that part of it that entered the bay spread across its entire latitude, losing height. Therefore, the wave in the bay was low, and not everyone noticed it... Thus, tidal waves caused by earthquakes in the Pacific Ocean do not pose a danger to the city of Petropavlovsk.

Question: Did the Kuril Islands sink as a result of the earthquake?

Answer: The sinking of the Kuril Islands did not occur. Thanks to the great force of the tidal wave, the loose banks in the coastal area were washed away, soil and sand were washed away and carried away. Ravines and pits formed in the banks. This created the impression of subsidence in the Severo-Kurilsk area. In fact, no noticeable subsidence or uplift occurred in the Kuril Islands area and Kamchatka.

Question: Has the wave that flooded Severo-Kurilsk receded, or has the sea remained in place of the city?

Answer: Tidal waves went back into the sea within a few minutes after the onset, and its level remained the same as it was before the earthquake. Due to the fact that houses and roofs from Severo-Kurilsk were carried away by the waves into the strait, where they floated with the current, it seemed from the plane that the sea had been staying in the area of the city for a long time. This also created false rumors about the sinking of Severo-Kurilsk. In fact, the city has remained the same."

As mentioned above, on the afternoon of November 5, the destroyer Bystry left Petropavlovsk for Severo-Kurilsk, with Rear Admiral Lev Panteleev, acting head of rescue operations, on board. He was still sailing along the coast of Kamchatka when all ships operating in Severo-Kurilsk and heading towards it were ordered to obey the rear admiral. On the way, Panteleev received a radiogram from Petropavlovsk with the following content: “The steamships Korsakov, Kashirstroy, Uelen left for you at 12 o’clock local time, Sevzaples and Chapaev at 18 o’clock, Pacific Star at 20 o’clock , "Kamchatsky Komsomolets" at 18 o'clock, SRT-649 - at 11.30, SRT-645 - at 14 o'clock, SRT-669 - at 15 o'clock. The SRT "Mechanik Lesovoy", SRT-663, SRT "Berkut" are also sent to the sea. , motor ship "Nevelsk". Inform the expediency of the further direction of the ships. "Lunacharsky", "Novgorod", "Nakhodka", "Sovneft" and two ships of the Sakhalin Shipping Company also left Vladivostok.

At 23:30 the captains were given the call sign of Rear Admiral Penteleyev to establish independent contact with him.

By the night of November 5-6, a total of 27 different ships were approaching Severo-Kurilsk, including 8 warships and the rescue ship "Nayezdnik". In addition, the steamship "Korsakov" was heading to the island of Onekotan, and the "Voikov" was heading to Matua Island. In addition, the Anatoly Serov steamship was finishing its unloading in Petropavlovsk and was ready to immediately go to sea with warm clothes for the victims. It was a whole flotilla, ready to take up to 20 thousand victims from the shore. There would have been other ships if Panteleev had not stopped their exit when he realized that so many of them were not required. Alas, on the first day of the tragedy, no one could have known that several tens of thousands of people died on the northern Kuril Islands. Only about ten thousand survivors remained to be taken out.

On the evening of November 5, the weather in the northern Kuril Islands and southern Kamchatka sharply deteriorated and became very cold. The wind rose and a storm was expected. Minesweepers and barges began to approach the ship "Vychegda" with a request to moor there for the night. The captain of the Vychegda, Smirnov, agreed to this.

By 1 a.m. the wind had increased to force 6. In order to stay anchored during the strong current in the strait and the rising wind, the Vychegda was forced to constantly operate the machines at low and medium speed. The captains of the steamship Krasnogorsk and the steamship Amderma, which had just arrived, soon could not stand such an exhausting struggle. They took off from the strait into the sea. "Vychegda" continued to fight heroically, since an emergency fish minesweeper was moored to it and could not be unmoored.

At about 4 o'clock in the morning the wind rose to force 8, and with a strong current to the north, the ship began to gradually move towards Sea of Okhotsk. Captain Smirnov was forced to give instructions to all ships moored to the Vychegda, except for the emergency minesweeper, to move away from the sides. But the steamer continued to drift and did not hold the anchor. During the night, "Vychegda" moved one and a half miles away from its previous anchorage.

Only at 7 o'clock in the morning on November 6 the wind began to subside. The steamer weighed anchor and returned to the roadstead of Severo-Kurilsk. At dawn they wanted to send the boat ashore, but the wind and current did not allow this to be done. Captain Smirnov sent a radiogram to Petropavlovsk, in which he informed the commission about the situation. "At 8 am we got up again in the roadstead of Severo-Kurilsk. I called the boats. There is no connection with the shore. I can’t send boats - there is a strong current. The wind is north-west 7 points, snowfall. Some boats are at anchor, burning flares, they do not have diesel engines or mechanics There are a lot of people on the shore, you can see them on the hills."

At 9 o'clock in the morning, the destroyer Bystry approached near the Vychegda. One of the captain's assistants went to Rear Admiral Panteleev to report the situation. In addition, in a letter to the admiral, Captain Smirnov asked him to strictly take control of the work of the floating vessels of the North Kuril Fish Trust. “The death of a large number of boats and seiners directly in the strait occurred due to the negligence of the surviving leaders of the fishing trust,” the captain wrote, “whose self-propelled vessels made no attempt to use good weather in the afternoon of November 5, when almost all the floating units, without teams, were near Severo-Kurilsk. In this regard, nothing was done by the naval forces, which picked up only a few barges with cargo. Vessels - fish trust boats and seiners - continued to die in the strait until the evening."

When the sky was completely clear and the sea had almost calmed down, the Vychegda managed to send a boat to the shore with another assistant captain. For General Duka, he was carrying a letter similar to the letter for Panteleev. Immediately the following radiogram went to Petropavlovsk, which said: “At 9 am Panteleev arrived and began to familiarize himself with the situation. At 10 o’clock he sent people to the shore for transportation by a lifeboat. The distance to the shore is 1 mile, in a day I can take people with my boats 80".

Around noon, a boat returned from the shore and brought people. They said that some young soldiers could not be brought to the water to put them in a boat - they became so afraid of hydrophobia after the disaster they saw with the mass death of their colleagues.

By 15 o'clock Panteleev managed to restore order on the shore. By this time, five more ships arrived in the roadstead. Boats with people began to approach the sides. By 6 p.m., Vychegda had accommodated 700 people—mostly civilians, women and children. There was no more room, which Smirnov notified the admiral about. He ordered to immediately film in Vladivostok. But the captain of the Vychegda violated the order and went to Petropavlovsk. He explained his decision as follows: “The reason for leaving for Petropavlovsk was a large number of people taken on board the ship without the possibility of creating appropriate conditions for them for a long journey. People did not have enough warm clothing; the impossibility of providing a warm room for a large number of people, the impossibility of providing everyone with food during a long period transition, as well as the need to provide medical assistance to the seriously wounded and sick."

At 18:15 on November 6, the Vychegda retreated from the Severo-Kurilsk roadstead. The strait was already crowded due to the unprecedented number of ships that had come here. Coming out of the strait, Smirnov risked hitting someone with his side.

Later, in a memo from the Secretary of the Kamchatka Regional Committee of the CPSU V.I. Alekseev to the Secretary of the Khabarovsk Regional Committee of the CPSU A.P. Efimov, quite a lot of space was devoted to the actions of the crew of the Vychegda steamship to save the residents of Severo-Kurilsk. First, the entire crew was listed, after which it was said: “These comrades from the crew of the Vychegda steamship, the first ship that arrived for rescue work in the Severo-Kurilsk area, showed themselves to be a very united team. They carried out rescue work in an organized manner and provided assistance to the victims first medical aid, 818 people were delivered to Petropavlovsk."

When reading this memorandum, one notices the inconsistency in the figures for the number of people transported to Vychegda. The captain of the Vychegda reported that he took 700 people on board; Alekseev’s memo listed 818. There are many such inconsistencies in the documents. The documents are serious, secret, but, apparently, to be on the safe side, the numbers were deliberately confused, while the true numbers were shown in encryption, which were then destroyed. For example, it is impossible to accurately determine the number of deaths in Severo-Kurilsk. There is oral evidence that approximately 50 thousand people died. One of the witnesses is A.I. Nikulina, a resident of Petropavlovsk, who worked that year as a cryptographer at Glavkamchatrybprom. She saw this figure with her own eyes. Her colleagues were in Severo-Kurilsk, where they encrypted reports. According to the testimony of A.I. Nikulina, one of the cryptographers returned to Petropavlovsk “touched” - he was so impressed by the terrible pictures of what he saw and the data that he encrypted.

“The tanks were overturned by the wave,” said A.I. Nikulina. “A lot of policemen died at the hands of looters. They guarded safes and other surviving valuables. They were killed. In general, there was a lot of looting.”

Of course, the terrible figure of 50 thousand dead seems incredible. But how much then? Below, in the final chapter, an attempt will be made to count the number of victims.

So, by the end of the day on November 6, people who remained alive in Severo-Kurilsk and on Shumshu Island began to be actively loaded onto ships. No matter what confusion happened, which is inevitable, the ships approached the islands relatively quickly. Look at the map - the distances are not small. Even from Petropavlovsk it is almost 400 kilometers. Therefore, although too ideologically and pompously, in the spirit of that time, party secretary V.I. Alekseev wrote about this in his note, but, in essence, he wrote correctly: “People saw that in case of any natural disaster they would not be left to the mercy of fate , they are and will continue to be cared for by our party and the Soviet government. Most of the victims express their gratitude to our Soviet government, the Communist Party and personally to Comrade Stalin for their salvation and assistance provided, and despite the great personal material losses, as well as the death of their own. relatives and friends, strive to quickly settle in certain places and work together with all our people for the good of the Motherland."

The deputy head of the police department of the UMGB of the Sakhalin region, Lieutenant Colonel Smirnov, who later arrived in Severo-Kurilsk, conducted an investigation into some facts of theft and looting that took place during the disaster. In particular, he dealt with a statement from a resident of the village of Shelekhovo, Malyutin, regarding the loss of property from his house. Among others, the radio operator of the logger (small fishing minesweeper) No. 636, Pavel Ivanovich Smolin, was interrogated. The text of the interrogation protocol is interesting because it describes the picture of the disaster seen from the sea.

So, P.I. Smolin showed:

“On the night of November 5, 1952, I, along with other fishermen, was at sea on a logger, catching fish, or rather, were in a bucket. At about 4 o’clock in the morning, a large shaking of the ship was felt on the logger. I and other fishermen understood it as an earthquake... On the night on November 5... there was a storm warning of 6-7 points. After the earthquake, our logger, under the command of Captain Lymar, went to sea first. It was about 4 o'clock in the morning.

Walking along the Second Strait in the area of Cape Banzhov, our logger was covered by the first wave several meters high. While in the cockpit, I felt that our ship seemed to be lowered into a hole, and then thrown high up. A few minutes later a second wave followed and the same thing happened again. Then the ship sailed calmly, and no surges were felt. The ship was at sea all day. Only at about 6 p.m. did some military radio station transmit to us: “Return to Severo-Kurilsk immediately. We are waiting at the apparatus, Alperin.” I immediately reported to the captain, who immediately answered: “I am returning to Severo-Kurilsk immediately.” By this time we had on board up to 70 quintals of fish caught per day. The logger headed for Severo-Kurilsk.

On the way back, I radioed logger No. 399, asking the radio operator: “What happened to Severo-Kurilsk?” Radio operator Pokhodenko answered me: “Go to save people... after the earthquake, the wave washed away Severo-Kurilsk. We are standing under the side of the ship, the steering is out of order, the propeller is bent.” My attempts to contact Severo-Kurilsk were unsuccessful - he was silent. I contacted Shelekhovo. The radio operator answered me: “There was a strong earthquake in Severo-Kurilsk, maybe something happened”... Back in the Sea of Okhotsk, not reaching the islands of Paramushir and Shumshu, the logger team, including me, saw roofs of houses, logs, boxes floating towards them , barrels, beds, doors. By order of the captain, the crew was posted on the deck on both sides and on the bow in order to rescue people stranded at sea. But no people were found. Throughout the entire journey of 5-6 miles, we observed the same picture: floating barrels, boxes, etc. in a dense mass...

Arriving at the roadstead, our logger approached logger No. 399... whose captain asked our captain not to leave them... We replied that we would not abandon them and took anchor. There was no connection with the shore. The time was around 2-3 am on November 6, 1952. We were waiting for dawn. Lights were burning on the hills opposite Severo-Kurilsk. We believed that people were fleeing on the hills; there were a lot of fires burning. As dawn began, I and others discovered that the city of Severo-Kurilsk had been washed away.

At about 8 o'clock in the morning, I and other sailors, under the command of the third mate, Comrade Kryvchik, sailed on a boat to the cannery and landed here. People, including military men, were walking around the site of the city, collecting corpses... Having examined the place where the barracks in which I lived was located, I did not find any signs (of it)... I did not find any things belonging to me - everything was demolished...

My family - wife Anna Nikiforovna Smolin, four-year-old son Alexander - arrived on November 6 by refrigerator from Vladivostok. She was on vacation and went to pick up her son in Krasnodar region, to her homeland... I found her on a refrigerator on November 8th. Now his wife and son are on board logger No. 636, working as a cook.

After I did not find the barracks in which I lived, I went by boat to my logger, taking on board people from the shore, including women and children. The logger crew continued to transport people on board.

On November 7 or 8, we received a radiogram: “All people taken on board, among those in distress, must be transferred to the ship,” so we transferred all of them to ships, the names of which I don’t remember. The evacuation of the civilian population ended on November 9, and no more people came to us."

These bays are located on the eastern coast of Kamchatka, south of the entrance to Avacha Bay. On the shore of Bolshoi Vilyuy there was the village of Staraya Tarya (collective farm "Vilyuy"), and in Malaya Saranaya there was a base for the Avachinsky fish processing plant.

In Stara Tarja, eight houses, a store, a food warehouse and a pier were destroyed. 21 people died.

In Malaya Sarannaya Bay, eight residential buildings, a store, and a warehouse were also destroyed, and the pier and base were washed away. 7 people died.

Early in the morning, military sailors based in the inner Yagodnaya Bay rushed to help the fishermen. They provided assistance to the survivors, and also found and buried the dead. It was from the operational duty officer of the Kamchatka military flotilla, Maslennikov, that Petropavlovsk received a radiogram about what had happened in these bays. After the military, the boats of the Avachinsky plant, headed by director N. Grekov, headed there.

By the evening of November 6, the Glavkamchatrybprom tug Hercules arrived in Malaya Sarannaya Bay. Large quantities of barrels, logs, uprooted bushes and trees, and various household utensils were still floating around here. At 18:30, the captain of the tug, Evgeniy Ivanovich Chernyavsky, radioed to the city: “The boat has returned from the shore. According to the director, they do not need help, the food was abandoned by boats. There were 7 casualties, no corpses were found. The base was destroyed, the village is intact. In Vilyui There are wounded, I can’t approach, I need to send a boat. Please advise further actions.”

Subsequently, when all the dead were identified, there were 28 of them in Staraya Tarja and Malaya Saranna.

To save people in Morzhovaya Bay, as well as other points adjacent to this part of the Kamchatka coast, a medium-sized fishing trawler "Halibut", owned by Glavkamchatrybprom, was sent. On board the trawler was Deputy Chairman of the Kamchatka Regional Executive Committee Shevchuk. Early in the morning of November 6, the Halibut approached the Shipunsky Peninsula.

Upon entering Morzhovaya Bay, the crew noticed the brownish-yellow color of the snow along the banks. Apparently, it was the dirty splashes of tsunami waves mixed with earth and debris that scattered far around that left their traces. And the fresh snow that fell last night sprinkled dirt, which appeared through it in brown spots. The storm that had broken out the day before was beginning to subside, but the waves were even larger. Tufts of grass, bushes, branches and even tree trunks floated all over the bay. And when the trawler began to enter the narrow, elongated Bolshaya Walrus Bay, the garbage noticeably increased. Planks, logs, barrels, and broken boats began to appear. On the shore, on the right side, a discarded kungas lay on its side. All this indicated that a great tragedy had indeed occurred here.

At 10:15 a.m., the Halibut dropped anchor opposite the destroyed Aleut base. A man soon appeared on the shore. It was the head of the base, Druzhinin, who came running. When the fishermen went ashore on the boat, he told them everything that had happened the previous night. All buildings at the base were washed away into the bay, all that remained of the warehouses were wooden posts dug in around the perimeter. Seven children died, including six children of Druzhinin himself. He and his wife were miraculously saved. Now they only have a daughter left, who lived in a boarding school in the village of Zhupanovo.

Druzhinin led the fishermen to a hill where the surviving residents of the base spent the past night warming themselves by the fire in the open air. There were six of them left: Druzhinin with his wife Anna, workers Gradarev and Beloshitsky and Usova with their little son. Beloshitsky immediately after the incident went on foot to the Shipunsky weather station to report from there on the radio about the tragedy. The rest were looking for children all this time. One girl was found dead, the rest were still hoped to be found.

Druzhinin and his wife were torn between their search and the need to collect the remaining property, since both were accountable persons: he was the head of the base, she was the supply manager. The arrivals looked around the shore and saw various spare parts of ships and equipment that were stored in warehouses, sprinkled with snow, scattered in disarray. All this had to be collected and a complete inventory taken.

The arriving people took upon themselves all the troubles, realizing what a psychological shock the inhabitants of the base had experienced. All five, frozen and almost insane, were sent on board the ship. The body of the dead girl was taken there. The captain gave the sailors the task of making a coffin and digging a grave. The rest were divided into three groups. Two went to different sides along the shore to look for missing children, and the third began to collect the remains of property.

In the afternoon, the bodies of all the children were found, after which Shevchuk and the captain of the Halibut decided to take them on board and hastily leave, as prescribed by the regional headquarters, to other points, and then to Severo-Kurilsk, but the grief-stricken Druzhinins protested, they wanted bury the children on the island.

"Halibut" was allowed to stay in Walrus Bay and do whatever the people asked. They also gave the order not to beat the cows, but to try to take them away.

During the day, strong tremors were felt on the shore. At night they happened again. The elements did not subside...

The holiday of November 7 did not make anyone happy. It was the day of the children's funeral. And to this day, according to people who have been on the deserted shore of Bolshaya Morzhovaya Bay, a mass grave is visible in which the innocent victims of the tsunami are buried - 6 small children of the Druzhinins and the son of Gradarev.

Many casualties and great destruction in the Bolshaya Zhirovaya and Malaya Zhirovaya bays became known on the afternoon of November 5 from a radiogram from Border Troops Major Klimovich. In the evening, the tug "Sannikov" and refrigerator No. 173 were equipped there. The expedition was headed by the deputy chairman of the Kamchatka Regional Executive Committee, Yagodinets. Senior mate Nikolai Ivanovich Lutsay acted as captain on the tugboat "Sannikov".

In Malaya Zhirovaya there was a fish factory No. 3 and the base of the Avacha fish factory. The wave washed away all industrial buildings and residential buildings here. There were many casualties. The plant was headed by Ivan Trofimovich Kovtun. His two-year-old daughter died, the body was not found. The famous Kamchatka ichthyologist Innokenty Aleksandrovich Polutov in his book “A long time ago” told this story this way: “Kovtun and his wife somehow escaped; the girl they were leading was torn out of their hands by a wave...”.

By the way, at the Kamchatka branch of TINRO in Zhirovaya Bay there was a summer house - an observation post. It was built just in 1952. He was carried out to sea by a tsunami wave along with his watchman. Unfortunately, Polutov does not disclose the name of the watchman; he is also not on the official list of the dead.

The fate of most residents of Malaya Zhirovaya was tragic. The entire Dyachenko and Podshibyakin families perished. From the Gimadeev family, a father and two sons were in Yagodnaya Bay, without them their entire family died - a mother and three daughters.

In Bolshaya Zhirovaya there was the village of Novaya Tarya, in which workers of plant No. 3 and the Kirov collective farm lived. All buildings here were also destroyed and washed away. 46 people were saved, 81 died, but only 29 bodies were found.

The rescue expedition worked in difficult weather conditions– it was snowing, the wind was strong. The bodies found were loaded onto a refrigerator to be taken to central village Avachinsky fish processing plant - Tarya, and bury him there. There was no point in burying them on the spot, since there was practically no one left to live in the bays.

In Malaya Zhirovaya Bay, the sailors found a fish factory safe with a large amount of money - 69 thousand 269 rubles, loaded it onto the Sannikov and delivered it to the city. They also found a wounded border guard on the shore, who was brought to the surviving outpost in Malaya Zhirovaya.

As mentioned above, in the village of Nalychevo there was a branch of the fishing artel named after. Lenin, whose central estate was located in Khalaktyrka. 39 people lived in Nalychevo along with their children. The village was destroyed by the first wave of the tsunami, killing four children and one old pensioner. The remaining residents fled to the nearest border outpost, where they were sheltered and from where they radioed Petropavlovsk about the tragedy.

After Petropavlovsk learned about what had happened, sappers with pontoons were sent to the site. However, when the soldiers arrived at the village, the water had already subsided, leaving behind a real swamp through which cars could not pass. They also could not get to the outpost, since it was separated from the road by three huge gullies. Then it was decided to evacuate people from the sea. Landing barge No. 104 was sent to the outpost under the command of Senior Lieutenant Zuev. The division commander went with the crew to Nalychevo landing ships captain 2nd rank Pivin and secretary of the party board at the Kamchatka regional committee of the CPSU M. L. Artemenko.

At about 9 pm on November 6, the barge stopped in front of the border outpost. A memo from M. L. Artemenko about this operation has been preserved:

"... We didn’t know the terrain and the approaches, but having discovered the border post of Cape Nalychev, we decided to contact the shore and establish exactly the situation and where the people were. An attempt to find out from the border guards who came ashore to contact us was unsuccessful, since the noise was loud The surf of the sea, the wind and the long distance to the shore did not allow the voice to accurately establish the situation.

Then we, that is, I and comrades Pivin and Zuev, decided that we needed to go from the ship to the shore for communication. But it’s risky to do this in a boat at night in such surf; it’s better to jump straight off the ladder in rubber suits. The assistant commander of the ship, Lieutenant N.S. Kuznetsov, was appointed for this purpose and, in order to have a complete understanding, I also went with him.

Comrade Kuznetsov, taking a risk, was the first to throw himself into the sea with a rope, reached the shore and, together with the border guards, pulled the rope. I, freely holding on to her, also walked to the shore. Having established the entire situation and exactly where people were and how to approach, we tried to return to the ship, but the intensifying storm and snowfall did not allow us to do this. The decision was made to wait until the morning.

On the morning of November 7, we boarded the ship, explained the situation to the ship’s commander, and went to the place where the people were. We approached the shore at a distance of 50-60 meters. They could not get any closer, because there was a large sandbank and a large wave surge. They decided to dress the sailors in rubber overalls, pull the rope ashore and, throwing out the ladder, first carry all the children in their arms aboard the ship, and deliver the adults by boat. And so they did.

The entire operation was carried out well. People were placed in a well-heated cockpit, first having tea, then lunch and dinner.

Captain Comrade Zuev did not leave the bridge all the time, he himself commanded the ship back and forth. Six sailors worked excellently: four who carried the children from the shore to the ship through the freezing water, and two who transported the adults.

The entire team lovingly greeted the victims, especially the children. While the parents were being taken onto the ship, the sailors had already warmed up the children and given them tea.”

Later, in a memo from the Secretary of the Kamchatka Regional Committee of the CPSU V.I. Alekseev to the Secretary of the Khabarovsk Regional Committee of the CPSU A.P. Efimov, there is also room for two people who participated in the rescue of the residents of Nalychevo. The note says: “We especially ask you to note the work of our comrades: Eliseev, the head of the outpost in the village of Nalychevo, who received 32 people fleeing the flood, provided them with food, clothing, shoes at the expense of the outpost and for three days kept at the outpost; Zuev - captain of the military flotilla ship DK-104, who ensured the transportation of 32 people from the village in difficult conditions. Nalychevo".

In turn, Senior Lieutenant Zuev submitted a report to encourage his subordinates, thanks to which we know who exactly participated in that heroic operation.

"List of personnel of military unit 90361-a who distinguished themselves while providing assistance to the population of the village of Nalychevo 7. 11.1952.:

1. Lieutenant Kuznetsov N. S.

2. Foreman 1st article Bondarev P.N.

3. Foreman 1 article Lebedinsky L.K.

4. Senior sailor V. I. Franov

5. Senior sailor Smirnov V.A.

6. Sailor Burdin Vs. I.

7. Sailor Naumenko A. I.

8. Sailor Korobov N. I.

9. Senior sailor N. F. Soloviev."

After completing the rescue work, DK-104 arrived in Petropavlovsk, where all Nalychevo residents were handed over to doctors.

The holiday came no matter what. The city authorities simply had to hold it in full ceremonial fashion, according to the established Soviet tradition - with a demonstration of workers, a parade, a rally, speeches, colorful balloons and posters.

On November 7, the relay of demonstrations began from Kamchatka. At 11 a.m. there is a rally. The gathered people wave balloons and red flags and listen to the whistles of ships in the port. There, people arriving from the coast and islands affected by the tsunami are being unloaded. "Kamchatskaya Pravda" later wrote: "After the rally, a demonstration begins. Banners, slogans and posters flood the street..." The day turned out to be cold, gloomy, windy, rare snowflakes were falling.

People remember how after the demonstration, throwing flags into the backs of cars, they ran to the port to meet the victims. But the police did not allow us to go to the shore.

And at 00:05, that is, at night after the holiday, the city was again shaken by tremors. The elements did not subside. True, this time there was no destruction or tsunami.

Back in 1935, academician geologist Alexander Nikolaevich Zavaritsky organized in the village of Klyuchi, at the foot of Klyuchevsky volcano volcanological station in Kamchatka. It was a small white house with a modest set of special appliances. Zavaritsky’s baton in the study of volcanoes was picked up by Doctor of Geological and Mineralogical Sciences Boris Ivanovich Piip. During all the days described here, he was at the seismic station together with researcher Vera Petrovna Enman.

Alas, the first tremors of the earthquake on the night of November 5 in Klyuchi, as well as at the Petropavlovskaya station, were not recorded by instruments. Literally before this, Piip dismantled them for preventative repairs, but there were simply no others. Based on his feelings, he determined the strength of the tremors in Klyuchi to be 5 points according to the 12-point OST-VKS system then in force.

"5 points - a fairly strong earthquake (26 - 50 mm / sq.m.); on the street and in general in the open air it is noted by many, even in full swing of the day's work. Inside the houses it is felt by everyone due to the general shaking of the building; the impression is like falling of a heavy object (bag, furniture); swaying of chairs, beds together with the persons on them, as in rough seas.” (From the instructions).

The tremors of varying strength continued for more than a day, and on the evening of November 6, B.I. Piip was able to send a telegram to Petropavlovsk with the following content through mail in Ust-Kamchatsk:

“The earthquake recorded in Klyuchi on November 5 at about 4 a.m. with a magnitude of 5 turned out to be the initial shaking of a swarm of earthquakes that have been continuing with variable strength for 30 hours (as of 10 a.m. on 11/6/52). Earthquakes originate along the coastal cliff of the bottom ocean along the island of Paramushira to Cape Shipunsky, Doctor of Sciences Piip.

Piip did not yet know about the tsunami and the disasters it caused. But he assumed that there were consequences of the earthquake. Therefore, he sent another telegram in which he asked to “inform about the consequences of the earthquake in Petropavlovsk and help obtain information through Sidorenko (head of the Main Directorate of Chattrybprom - Auto.) about the consequences of the earthquake on the territory of the peninsula. The information is necessary to clarify the seismic zoning of Kamchatka."

The next morning, November 7, Piip was informed from Petropavlovsk by a large radiogram through the district party committee in Ust-Kamchatsk.

After this, B.I. Piip’s radio conversations with the regional leadership became relatively regular. He transmits to the city all received and analyzed information. Here, for example, is one of his telegrams from the same November 7:

"About the state at 18:00 on November 7. The earthquake continues at intervals of 15 - 20 minutes, but soil displacements are becoming weaker. The sources have noticeably moved to the northeast, concentrating in the area of Cape Shipunsky. I believe that movements in the earth's crust are weakening, further large tremors unlikely. I received your information, the picture is now clear. I think you should call me, discuss the event and make an assessment for prevention in the future.”

By the way, the tremors, weakening, continued until November 12. But the event was still discussed then. Piip firmly posed the problem of creating a system of permanent observations of the seismic situation in the Far East. Here is an excerpt from his note:

“Currently, there are two seismic stations in Kamchatka: one at the Geophysical Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences in the city of Petropavlovsk and the other in the form of a seismic department at the Kamchatka Volcanological Station of the USSR Academy of Sciences in the village of Klyuchi. Both stations were created quite recently and are working completely unsatisfactorily for a number of reasons , so far they are only engaged in recording earthquakes. They do not have the results of their work, there is no way to generalize the seismograms of these stations, as well as other stations. Far East, are sent for detailed processing to the seismic department of the Far Eastern Branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences on Sakhalin.

Due to the fact that Kamchatka is a unique seismic region, in which not only destructive tectonic earthquakes occur, but also strong volcanic earthquakes often break out in the form of swarms. Due to the fact that not all Kamchatka earthquakes are detected by the rare network of seismic stations in the Far East (Vladivostok, Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, Kurilsk and Magadan), as a result of which the position and activity of many seismotectonic zones of the peninsula are not recorded, the existence of only two seismic stations here should be considered very insufficient.

In Kamchatka and the nearest islands, it is necessary to create at least 4 more seismic stations: one on the western coast of the peninsula near the village of Icha, another in the village of Ossora in the north of Kamchatka, a third in the city of Severo-Kurilsk on Paramushir (or in the inhabited point on Cape Lopatka) and the fourth on the Commander Islands. A network of 6 stations will detect all tectonic and volcanic earthquakes in the region, determine active seismic zones and develop earthquake forecasting issues. To process the materials, a center for the Kamchatka seismic service should be created in Petropavlovsk... I believe that it is necessary to ask the government to create in Kamchatka the named network of seismic stations and a permanent seismic service, similar to those operating in the Crimea, the Caucasus and Central Asia."

Having considered the note by B.I. Piip, the 1st Secretary of the Kamchatka Regional Committee of the CPSU P.N. Solovyov on November 28 is preparing his memorandum to Khabarovsk, in which he specifically justifies the construction of four seismic stations in Kamchatka. The region is beginning the path to creating not only specialized volcanological and seismological services, but also to organizing the Institute of Volcanology - the current pride of all of Russia. As they say, every cloud has a silver lining...

When the epic with the removal from the shore and delivery of people to Petropavlovsk, Sakhalin and Vladivostok was generally coming to an end, it was decided to send the motor schooner "Poyarkov" of the Kamchatrybflot along the eastern coast of Kamchatka to once again examine all the bays, capes and rocks. The fact is that sometimes the pilots received information that people or smoke were seen in one place or another. Vague lights were also sometimes seen from ships at night. In a word, everything had to be carefully examined again.

The captain of the schooner, Evgeny Ivanovich Skavrunsky, set sail on the evening of November 9. On the schooner, V. S. Brovenko, instructor of the fishing industry department of the regional committee of the CPSU, was responsible for completing the task.

On November 10, the expedition carefully examined the bays of Ahamten, Asacha, Mutnaya, Rukavichka, and Pirates. At this time, the captain received a radiogram, which ordered him to go to Khodutka Bay and pick up prisoners in distress from there. The crew was very surprised by the fact that the people they knew about had not yet been filmed. Is it really just because these are prisoners, including political ones?

And it was like this. In Khodutka Bay there was a fishing base of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, where prisoners caught and processed fish for their enterprise, located in Lagernaya Bay in Avachinskaya Bay - in the village of Okeanskoye. The prisoners were led by Vladimir Vainshtein, a well-known engineer in Kamchatka, who also served time and under whose leadership, in fact, the production workshops were built in Okeanskoye. At that moment he was leading a brigade in Khodutka. This is what his son, the famous photographer Igor Vladimirovich Weinstein, who knew this whole story from his father, said:

“There were no more fish, they didn’t do anything, they were just waiting for them to be taken out. My father lived alone in a small house that stood on a small hill - 2-3 meters above sea level - right on the spit that separated the bay from the estuary. There was a small climb up the spit, where all the prisoners lived. There was no security, because the father himself was responsible for selecting people for the brigade, so it was also considered who would run away from Kamchatka. ?

So, they had nothing to do, they sat in the upper barracks and played preference. Coincidentally, on that ill-fated night of November 5, we finished playing late at night, around 4 o’clock in the morning. The father left the barracks and headed to his house. There, on the spit, he would have died first, but something seemed to stop him. He heard a roar from the sea. I took a few dozen steps with a flashlight and heard this hum. How did he guess, by what instinct? But he immediately ran back to the barracks and ordered everyone to run upstairs. We ran up the slope. And for good reason. The wave reached the barracks and washed it away. And the house too, of course. I came later and looked. The boat they used as a “bug” was thrown two and a half kilometers up the river. And there he stood. And the poor prisoners then spent all these days sitting half naked and hungry in the open air. They only dropped a bag of flour from the plane. It’s good that someone found matches..."

It was these people who needed to be taken off by the schooner "Poyarkov". She arrived in Khodutka Bay late in the evening of November 10, in complete darkness. We decided to act in the morning of November 11th.

With the onset of dawn, having specified the location of the ship and the shore, they lowered a boat led by senior mate Alexander Iosifovich Bashkirtsev. There was a strong wind blowing from the shore, up to force 9, and the work was not going to be easy. However, let's go. But they had just moved away from the schooner when they noticed a boat coming towards them. Weinstein was imprisoned there. Both boats returned to the ship, where Weinstein outlined the situation on shore. People urgently needed to be removed; they were starving.

V. S. Brovenko described the operation as follows: “The work of removing people began to be carried out only from 20 o’clock on November 11 under the light of a spotlight. Most of the team members expressed a desire to go out on a whaleboat voluntarily.

The removal of people took place in force 9 winds with icing. The whaleboat headed to the shore three times; the removal of people was carried out in small batches. A total of 26 people were taken from the shore, two of them women.

The team members who particularly distinguished themselves in rescue operations were: captain Skavrunsky, senior mate Bashkirtsev, senior engineer Lazebny, 2nd engineer Fominykh, sailor Babenko, boatswain Rudaev, engine mechanic Timoshenko, electrician Samoilenko.

The accepted people were fed and accommodated for rest, and clothes were dried.”

On the morning of November 12, the schooner continued its slow voyage along the coast of Kamchatka. She managed to save people in at least two more points.

Were all the people picked then? Through the Glavkamchatrybprom switchboard, dispatcher Mironov was given information that in the southern part of Mutnaya Bay at a height, opposite the Sivuchy stone, there were four people in a tent. The command was given to the minesweeper "Sever" to enter Mutnaya and check. The minesweeper checked and reported: “I walked from Cape Lopatka to Povorotny, and examined each bay thoroughly when entering. I didn’t find any people in Mutnaya Bay. Please receive further instructions.”

But someone saw people...

ALIVE AND MISSING

On November 12, the evacuation of the population affected by the tsunami ended. The islands of Paramushir and Shumshu are deserted. The survivors gradually found themselves mainly in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk and other cities of Sakhalin. But many of them returned to their islands again after a year or two. Many were drawn to the places where their relatives remained forever. Others simply had nowhere to go. True, the destroyed villages on the islands were not restored; people now lived mainly in Severo-Kurilsk, which they began to rebuild in a new location.

Undoubtedly, the biggest disaster associated with the tsunami of November 5, 1952 occurred here, on the island of Paramushir, where the casualties, as mentioned above, were colossal. But what kind of victims were there?

It is known that the Japanese, owning the Kuril Islands, concentrated more than 60 thousand soldiers on these islands during World War II. In addition, almost 20 thousand civilians lived on the islands. After the victory over Japan in August-September 1945, the Japanese population was completely removed from the Kuril Islands. We then got huge trophies: many beautiful defensive structures, airfields, barracks, training grounds, 11 ready-made fish processing plants, whaling plants, villages, etc. It was simply a sin not to use all this. In addition, the USSR fortified the islands with border troops. In total, by 1952, there were more than 100 thousand people on the islands, mostly military personnel. And most of them were right here, in the northern archipelago. According to the certificate of the Administration of the Far Eastern Military District No. 32/12/3969 dated November 30, 1998, issued to the administration of the North Kuril region, the following military formations were stationed on the islands of Paramushir and Shumshu as of November 5, 1952:

Paramushir Island:

6th machine gun and artillery division of the Order of Lenin;

1160 separate artillery and anti-aircraft battalion;

communications battalion;

43rd separate engineer battalion;

224th repair shop;

9th field bakery;

73rd separate aviation communications unit;

divisional automobile school;

137th separate medical and sanitary company;

veterinary hospital;

70th military postal station;

counterintelligence department of the MGB.

Shumshu Island:

12th Machine Gun-Artillery Order of Lenin Regiment;

50th Machine Gun Artillery Red Banner Regiment;

428th Red Banner Artillery Regiment;

84th self-propelled tank regiment.

For some reason, the certificate does not say anything about the sailors, although in Baykovo, for example, there was a torpedo boat base at that time. But even without that, it is clearly visible what a huge number of military personnel were then on these two islands. And all these people, who knew nothing about the tsunami, found themselves in that terrible “ocean night.” How many of them died? How many are left alive?

In total, 10.5 thousand civilians lived on two islands - Paramushir and Shumshu. The Severo-Kurilsk Museum has the following data on civilian casualties, calculated by various researchers: adults - 6,060, children under 16 years old - 1,742; total – 7,802 people.

I think there were no less military, if not more. Official secret documentation from 1952 calls them “Urbanovich’s people”, “Gribakin’s people”, after the names of the commanders. It is these victims that are unknown to us.

“The commander of the fifth flotilla has a government task to remove everyone from the Kuril Islands, even the border guards, to leave only his farm, the latter is not yet certain, but to remove everything from the population,” says a telephone message to the head of the Main Directorate of Chatribprom A.T. Sidorenko from one of his subordinates Klishin, who is in Severo-Kurilsk. This gives reason to say that everyone was taken out then. The border guards, however, were left behind. How many were taken out?

The memorandum of the 1st Secretary of the Kamchatka Regional Committee of the CPSU P. N. Solovyov to the Secretary of the Khabarovsk Regional Committee of the CPSU A. P. Efimov dated November 10, 1952 provides the following data:

The steamer "Korsakov" took out 472 people;

"Kashirstroy" – 1,200;

"Uelen" - 3,152;

"Mayakovsky" - 1,200;

"Khabarovsk" – 569;

All these people were sent to Primorye or Sakhalin.

"Vychegda" – 818;

Vessels of the Ministry of the Navy - 493;

Aviation – 1,509

These people were taken to Petropavlovsk.

Total: 9,413 people.

If we take into account that about 2,700 civilians remained alive, then the military took out 6,700 people. Were there really so many of them on the islands? Of course, more. One must think that at least ten thousand of them died. In total, the total number of victims in the Northern Kuril Islands can be taken to be up to 15-17 thousand people. Although, I repeat, there is oral data about 50 thousand. It is this figure that is still used in legends in Kamchatka and the Kuril Islands.

On November 17, Doctor of Geological and Mineralogical Sciences B.I. Piip sailed from Petropavlovsk to the Kuril Islands. On November 20 we approached the island of Onekotan. “We unloaded quite far from housing,” Piip wrote in his diary, “so we had to walk for a long time with our things along the shore. They walked and looked at various things and products lying among the stones. There were shells, salted tomatoes, potatoes, cans of canned food mixed with sea urchins and algae. Having climbed onto the terrace, where there were 3 completely intact houses, but with open doors and complete destruction inside, we stopped here to look for the owners. There weren't any. It became obvious that all this was abandoned during the sudden evacuation.”

Having examined the islands, Piip returned to Petropavlovsk on December 1. By this time, they were able to calculate that about 200 people had died in Kamchatka, but the number of missing people was unknown. “The latter is because the registration system was poorly set up,” notes B. Piip.

NO LOUD WORDS

On December 1, 1952, Stalin signed decree No. 5029-1960 SS, providing for the restoration of national economic facilities destroyed by the tsunami. The next day, the Council of Ministers of the RSFSR issued Resolution No. 1573-88 SS "On the labor and living conditions of the population affected by the earthquake." The author has at his disposal a certificate from the Chairman of the Kamchatka Regional Plan I. Chernyak about the implementation of this resolution as of the end of 1952. It is important to note that almost immediately the region received 200 thousand rubles to issue loans to victims for individual construction and 100 thousand rubles for business establishments. But no one took the money. Either there was no one, or people didn’t know how to do it. Or maybe they found government housing and no longer wanted to have their own private farms? In any case, that’s what the certificate says: “Slowly used due to lack of need.”

As for state-owned housing, indeed, the Kamchatka region was allocated 2 million rubles for expenses related to the living conditions of the population. The money was received and spent.

The All-Russian Central Council of Trade Unions allocated 100 free vouchers to sanatoriums and holiday homes in the Far East. At the time of writing, 40 vouchers were used.

To sell to the affected collective farms of Kamchatka, Tsentrosoyuz undertook to bring 1.4 thousand square meters of single-apartment standard panel houses, 2000 cubic meters of round timber, 60 tons of roofing iron, 10 tons of nails and 50 boxes of glass. In December, glass, 650 cubic meters of timber, and 9 panel houses arrived. In addition, collective farms received 100 tons of grain fodder and 700 tons of mixed feed.

And on January 13, 1953, I. Stalin signed decree of the Council of Ministers of the USSR No. 825-RS, which prescribed:

"Give social security authorities the right to:

1. Assign pensions to workers and employees who became disabled during the earthquake in Kamchatka and the Kuril Islands in November 1952., as well as to the families of workers and employees who lost their breadwinners during this earthquake in the amounts provided for in Articles 5, 7 and 15 of the Resolution of the Union Social Insurance Council under the People's Commissariat of Labor of the USSR of February 29 1952. № 47.

Persons working at the beginning of the earthquake (November 51952.) in positions that give the right to receive an increased pension established for workers in the most important sectors of the national economy and who became disabled during an earthquake, as well as members of their families in the event of the loss of a breadwinner during this earthquake, assign increased pensions accordingly for disability or in case of loss breadwinner in compliance with the conditions and norms for the assignment of pensions provided for cases of work injury.

These pensions shall be assigned on the basis of certificates issued to earthquake victims by the executive committees of local Soviets of Workers' Deputies.

2. Continue the payment of pensions to persons whose pension files were lost due to the earthquake in Kamchatka and the Kuril Islands in November 1952, according to decisions of the pension commissions under the district executive committees, after a preliminary check of documents confirming the receipt of pensions: pension certificate, personal account, protocol of the commission for assigning pensions, notes in the passport or other documents."

In principle, if we recall the situation with compensation and the provision of housing to victims of the earthquake in Neftegorsk in our time, then the distant Stalinist year of 1952, with its decree and other measures, looks more humane in relation to people...

If we talk about Petropavlovsk, then in 1952 only 2,820 people arrived there from the coast and the Kuril Islands. They were placed in military units (almost 2 thousand of those delivered were military), in hospitals, and in surrounding villages. Those in need were provided with clothes, shoes, and linen. Old-timers recall that there was a shortage of bread and some other essential products in the city, and there were queues in stores. But no one complained; the townspeople understood that all this had to be endured calmly and steadfastly.

True, people were very worried about rumors about a possible repeated, strong earthquake. To this the volcanologist Svyatlovsky replied: "Such earthquakes occur very rarely. Earthquakes of this type are known from history in 1737 and 1868 in the area of Petropavlovsk and the Kuril Islands. They caused tsunami waves similar to those that occurred in 1952. Thus, the period between catastrophes of this type is about 100 years and new An earthquake that creates a wave in the Kuril Islands may not happen soon."

Gradually the fear passed. But the constant expectation of a major seismic event lives in Kamchatka and Kuril residents constantly, it is in the subconscious. And there is no escape from this. But you have to live. And we must be able to unite, at the call of conscience, at the same time endure common hardships and misfortunes. How, without loud words, thousands of our compatriots, residents of Kamchatka and the Kuril Islands, managed then - on the Night of the Ocean.

According to volcanologist B. Piip, the maximum wave height is15 m. was observed in the very north of the Kamchatka coast, affected by the tsunami - Olga Bay.

Alexander Smyshlyaev