Shaky economy partly to blame for quake deaths

FROM RICHARD

LLOYD PARRY

in Neftegorsk

The destruction in Neftegorsk demonstrates yet again the near impossibility of predicting earthquakes. Damage was also accentuated by a misjudgment of its seismic vulnerability. The Institute of Marine Geology and Geophysics of the Russian Academy of Science gave the region a rating of six on the MSK scale, an international yardstick for measuring the maximum potential earthquake.

But last Sunday's earthquake was MSK nine - eight times as powerful as the assumed maximum, since the strength doubles for each point up the scale.

Okha, the main town of the region, was rated seven, although the tremors were felt much less violently there. The five-storey apartment blocks in Neftegorsk, of a standard type found all over the former Soviet Union, appear to have been built without any thought of earthquakes - with concrete boards cemented together without a steel frame. Four- and three-storey buildings survived, but 19 five-storey structures, housing most of the population of the oil town, were destroyed.

The situation has not been helped by Russia's unstable economic situation. A seismological institute in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, the island's capital, has been closed by budget cuts. The Centre for Earthquake Emergency and Natural Disaster Reduction, run by the Ministry of Construction in nearby Kamchatka peninsula, cannot be sure of its budget from one month to the next.

Dr Mark Klyachko, its director, who is in Sakhalin to assess the situation, said: "So many of the institutions of the Academy of Science these days are running their programmes without money."

Dr Klyachko, who is paid $200 (pounds 125) a month, said: "It affects everything, especially in a situation like this. For instance this is a developing economy, so there's no clear-cut property market. Because we don't know property prices, there is no property insurance and no reinsurance system." Poor communications make emergency relief harder: roads to Neftegorsk were also damaged by the tremors.

Petropevlovsk, where Dr Klyachko's institute is based, carried out a programme to strengthen buildings after seismologists predicted a possible big quake in 1987. Eighty per cent of medical facilities have been reinforced - at a cost of $120 (pounds 75) a square metre - and 50 per cent of schools. Only 7 per cent of residential buildings have been strengthened.

There is also argument between scientists and engineers about the best way of using resources. Seismologists concentrate on prediction. But, with one exception (China in 1975), no earthquake has been detected far enough in advance to evacuate the population.

Dr Klyachko, a civil engineer, said: "The Institute of Geophysics want to produce a world map of seismic risk. But it is impossible to assess seismic risk. The best we can hope for is to reduce seismic hazards - by strengthening buildings, redesigning cities, and helping people to prepare for what we can't predict."

nMoscow (Reuter) - The Russian President, Boris Yeltsin, expressed regret yesterday for implying that Japan had ulterior motives when it offered aid to victims of the earthquake.

The Russian leader, speaking off-the-cuff during a tour of a farming region outside Moscow on Wednesday, suggested Tokyo would want to use an offer of aid as a lever in a protracted territorial disputeover the south Kurile islands.

Soviet troops seized the islands, known in Japan as the Northern Territories, at the end of the Second World War and Tokyo wants them back.