The Kuril tsunami of 1952. How unstable the earth suddenly became. Lieutenant Kuznetsov N.S.

This is the last earthquake of the five most powerful on Earth, an article about which has not yet been published. Why wasn't there? Because it is the earliest? Not at all. Because it's not the most interesting? No, since it would be very funny for a person who was born in the USSR and lived in a seismically dangerous area, not to know about him and not to be interested in what is happening in his practically native country.
And 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, a strong earthquake occurred off the eastern coast of Kamchatka. The earthquake was followed by a massive tsunami that resulted in economic losses of about $1 million in 1952 prices. The magnitude of the earthquake was originally estimated at 8.2, but in 1977 Hiro Kanamori recalculated it, and as a result, the magnitude 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, moorings were destroyed, beaches were washed away, lawns were flooded. In Honolulu, the Harbor barge was dropped onto another freighter. In Hilo, the tsunami destroyed a small bridge. Wave heights of up to 9.1 meters have been recorded at Cape Kayena on Oahu. On the north coast of Oahu most of destruction in Hawaii. In Hilo, a boathouse was demolished at a cost of about $13,000. One span of the bridge was destroyed Cocos Islands. In Hilo alone, damage is estimated at $400,000. However, in other coastal cities in Hawaii, the rise in water was barely noticeable.

In Alaska, a strong tsunami was also observed. 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. Schools were closed in Dutch Harbor and people were evacuated to higher ground, but the wave did not cause damage, since its height was small, only half a meter. In other places, the height of the tsunami waves was even less - 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 howled less than a meter and did not cause noticeable damage.
In New Zealand the waves reached a height of 1m. A tsunami was also observed in Japan, but there is no information about the damage from it and the loss of life. Minor wave damage has even been reported in Peru and Chile, more than 9,000 kilometers away from the quake.

In Kamchatka, wave heights ranged from 0 to 5 meters, but in some places the tsunamis were higher (from Kronotsky Peninsula to Cape Shipursky - from 4 to 13 meters). The most high wave was observed in Olga Bay and was 13 meters high and there it caused significant damage. The time during which the waves reached Cape Olga was 42 minutes after the earthquake. From Cape Shipursky to Cape Povorotny, the height of the tsunami wave ranged from 1 to 10 meters and caused significant human 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 thrown at a distance of 500 meters from coastline. On west coast Kamchatka maximum height the tsunami was registered in Ozerny and was 5 meters. On the island of Alaid in the ridge Kuril Islands the wave height was 1.5 meters, on the island of Shumshu - 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 led to 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.
By last count total number the victims amounted to about four thousand people, most of whom were in the Kuril Islands.

Many destroyed settlements and frontier outposts have never been restored. The population of the islands has been greatly reduced. Severo-Kurilsk was rebuilt, moved away from the ocean, as far as the terrain allowed. As a result, he found himself in even more dangerous place- on the mudflow cone of the Ebeko volcano, one of the most active in the Kuriles. The population of the city today is about 3 thousand people. The catastrophe initiated the creation of a tsunami warning service in the USSR, which is now in a sad state due to beggarly funding.
HISTORY 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. Many earthquakes occur in this area, the last of which was recorded in 1997.
The earthquake of 1737 had a magnitude slightly less than 9.0 according to the latest calculation, 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 that caused significant damage in Kamchatka and human 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.
From the end of the 19th 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 of more 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, 5 December 1997 - 7.9).

List of earthquakes for 1952 (magnitude above 7

On the coast of Sakhalin in towns and villages you can see these warnings. And in our history there was also a catastrophe associated with the tsunami - large-scale, terrible.

In calm weather and with a westerly wind, they reach Severo-Kurilsk - the smell of hydrogen sulfide and chlorine is impossible not to feel. Usually in such cases, the Sakhalin Hydrometeorological Center transmits a storm warning about air pollution: it is easy to get poisoned by toxic gases. Eruptions in Paramushir in 1859 and 1934 caused mass poisoning people and death of pets. Therefore, in such cases, volcanologists urge city residents to use masks to protect their breath and filters for water purification.
The site for the construction of Severo-Kurilsk was chosen without 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 autumn of 1952, the country lived an ordinary life. The Soviet press, Pravda and Izvestia, did not get a single line: neither about the tsunami in the Kuriles, nor about thousands dead people. The picture of what happened can be restored only from the recollections of eyewitnesses, and rare photographs.

Secret tsunami

The tsunami wave after the earthquake in Japan reached the 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 were on the first line of the elements. The North Kuril tsunami of 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 settlements of Utyosny, Levashovo, Reef, Rocky, Coastal, Galkino, Okeansky, Podgorny, Major Van, Shelekhovo, Savushkino, Kozyrevsky, Babushkino, Baikovo were swept away ...
On the site of the former Severo-Kurilsk, June 1952. Writer Arkady Strugatsky, who served in those years in the Kuriles as a military translator, took part in the aftermath of the tsunami. From a letter to his brother in Leningrad:

"... I was on the island of Syumusyu (or Shumshu - look for it at the southern tip of Kamchatka). What I saw, did and experienced there - I can’t write yet. I can only say that I visited the area where the disaster that I wrote to you about , made itself felt especially strongly.

The black island of Syumushu, the island of the wind of Syumusyu, the ocean beats into the rocks-walls of Syumushu.
The one who was on Shumushu was on Shumushu that night, remembers how the ocean attacked Shumushu;
As on the piers of Shumushu, and on the pillboxes of Shumushu, and on the roofs of Shumushu, the ocean collapsed with a roar;
As in the dells of Shumushu, and in the trenches of Shumushu, the ocean raged in the bare hills of Shumushu.
And in the morning, Syumusyu, to the walls-rocks of Syumusyu many corpses, Syumusyu, carried the Pacific Ocean.
The black island of Shumushu, the island of fear of Shumushu. Who lives on Shumushu 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 the registration of residents in Severo-Kurilsk was not properly established. Seasonal workers, secret military units, the composition of which was not disclosed. According to the official report, in 1952 about six thousand people lived in Severo-Kurilsk.

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

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

Konstantin ran out of the house, lit a cigarette. The ground shook palpably underfoot. And suddenly from the side of the shore they heard shooting, screams, noise. In the light of the ship's searchlights, people fled from the bay. "War!" they shouted. So, at least, it seemed to the guy at first. Later I realized: the wave! Water!!! Self-propelled guns went from the sea towards the hills, where the frontier post was stationed. And together with everyone, Konstantin ran after him, upstairs.

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

"... Before we reached the regional department, we heard a great noise, then crackling from the sea. Looking back, we saw high altitude a wave of water advancing from the sea to the island ... 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 dressed (most in underwear, barefoot) and run into the hills.

- Our path to the hills lay through a ditch three meters wide, where wooden walkways were laid for the transition. Next to me, panting, ran a woman with a five-year-old boy. I grabbed the child in an armful - and together with him jumped over the ditch, where only the strength came from. And the mother had already moved over the planks, ”said Konstantin Ponedelnikov.

Army dugouts were located on the hill, where the exercises took place. It was there that people settled down to warm themselves - it was November. These dugouts became their refuge for the next few days.

three waves

After the first wave left, many went downstairs to find the missing relatives, to release the cattle from the barns. People did not know: the tsunami has great length waves, 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 gushed again greater strength and magnitude than the first. People, thinking that everything was already over (many, heartbroken by the loss of their loved ones, children and property), descended from the hills and began to settle in the surviving houses to keep warm and dress themselves. The water, meeting no resistance on its way... rushed onto the land, completely destroying the remaining houses and buildings. This wave destroyed the entire city and killed most of the population.

And almost immediately the third wave swept 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 a powerful (magnitude about 9 points) earthquake, the first tsunami wave reached Severo-Kurilsk. The height of the second, the most terrible, wave reached 18 meters. According to official figures, 2,336 people died in Severo-Kurilsk alone.

Konstantin Ponedelnikov did not see the waves themselves. At first he delivered refugees to the hill, then with several volunteers they went down and saved people for many hours, pulling them out of the water, taking them off the roofs. The real scale of the tragedy became clear later.

- He went down to the city ... We had a watchmaker there, a good guy, legless. I look: his stroller. And he himself lies there, dead. The soldiers pile the corpses on a cart and take them to the hills, there already or in mass grave, or how else they buried - God knows. And along the coast there were barracks, a sapper military unit. One foreman escaped, he was at home, and the whole company perished. A wave covered them. There was a bullpen, and there were probably people there. The maternity hospital, the hospital ... Everyone died, ”recalls Konstantin.

From a letter from Arkady Strugatsky to his brother:

“The buildings were destroyed, the entire coast was strewn with logs, fragments of plywood, pieces of hedges, gates and doors. There were two old ship artillery towers on the pier, they were placed by the Japanese almost at the end of the Russian-Japanese war. The tsunami threw them a hundred meters away. When dawn, those who managed to escape descended from the mountains - men and women in linen, trembling with cold and horror. Most of the inhabitants either drowned or lay on the shore interspersed 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, ended up on the Amderma steamer, completely crammed with fish. For people, they unloaded half of the coal hold, threw a tarpaulin.

Through Korsakov they brought them to Primorye, where they lived for some time in very difficult conditions. But then "above" they decided that recruitment contracts needed to be worked out, and they sent everyone back to Sakhalin. There was no question of any material compensation, it’s good if you could at least confirm the experience. Konstantin was lucky: his work boss survived and restored work books and passports...
After 64 years (2016), he reluctantly recalls that nightmare he experienced.

Belarusian Dmitry Galkovsky in 1952 was at the epicenter of one of the five most powerful tsunamis of the 20th century. Even now, he reluctantly recalls the events that happened to him, an ordinary sailor of the Soviet fleet, more than 60 years ago on the Kuril Islands.
He was drafted into the army from Nikolaevsk-on-Amur, where he lived and worked at the factory as a turner. Dmitry Andreyevich, together with thousands of conscripts, was first sent to Komsomolsk-on-Amur, then to the city of Sovetskaya Gavan on the banks of the Tatar Strait.
“There were 25 thousand of us gathered there - both conscripts and those who were demobilized. We were fed by 6 military kitchens. And if you forgot where your tent is, you won’t find it: it’s a whole city, ”recalls grandfather. - Conscripts were checked for a month to select the strongest and healthiest - only such were sent to the sea, because what kind of health care? And we had no choice where to serve. I passed the test. Through the Tatar Strait we entered the Sea of ​​Okhotsk and the Pacific Ocean. On the way, conscripts were transported to the Kuril Islands: the military was, probably, on each of them.

Private Galkovsky served on light ships - boats, self-propelled barges. I did not want to get on the ship, although I could. Perhaps the decision to remain in the same place saved his life on the night of November 5, 1952.
“That day I ended up on the farthest island - Shumshu. We were commanded by General Duka (Mikhail Ilyich - Hero Soviet Union, veteran of the Great Patriotic War. - Approx. TUT.BY). On November 4, I drove him from Paramushir to Shumshu - about 5 km. They went on a boat. Suddenly the sea stirred, boiled, the earth shook slightly. All the soldiers jumped out to Shumshu, and then they sang songs when they realized that it was not the enemy who was advancing. Then the situation on the islands was tense, we were constantly waiting for the alarm signal. We lived underground, in bunkers. My bunk was there too - with an address, a name. So I didn’t even have to stay near her - I stayed on the boat to spend the night. Therefore, he survived, ”recalls Dmitry Andreevich.
Private Galkovsky did not see how the wave was going - it was dark. He only heard the tsunami coming. Then logs flew, trash, there was a crack. The light boat was lifted to the very crest of the wave, and then it “blowed” down. The water tore the light ship apart.
Belarusian and some of his colleagues saved big ship. They were fed, warmed, and included in the lists of survivors. Most of the people died. Most likely, many of them drowned in those same underground bunkers, the pensioner believes.
“It was scary. I remember how people shouted with voices that were not their own: “Save me!”. And who will save? Go pick them up across the Pacific Ocean, - Dmitry Andreevich shakes his head and says that he remembers practically nothing about that day or the next month. - I only remember that he asked how I could get into the unit. And they told me that part of me was no more: everyone died, the banner sank. I don’t remember how they were sent from the islands, I came to my senses only in Vladivostok. I was commissioned. My legs were injured, but I moved, although it was painful. It looks like another finger on his hand was broken.

Rare footage of a black-and-white chronicle of the 1952 tsunami in the Kuriles.

Many destroyed villages were never rebuilt. The population of the islands has been greatly reduced. The port city of Severo-Kurilsk was rebuilt in a new place, higher up. Without carrying out the same volcanological examination, so that as a result the city ended up in an even more dangerous place - on the path of the mud flows of the Ebeko volcano, one of the most active in the Kuriles.
The scale of looting in this story is striking. Especially against the background of human exploits, which were sometimes performed at the cost of their own lives. The silence of the newspapers about the tragedy can be explained by the holiday of November 7th.

The surviving reports and testimonies are full of examples of amazing human courage: here are fishermen who loaded people into their kungas, and the director of the local fish trust Alperin, who died saving others, and unknown schoolgirls dragging some old woman into the hills. Police Major Smirnov, clearly not inclined to pathos, noted in a report written in fresh wake: “At critical moments, many nameless heroes, risking their lives, performed sublime feats.” However, there were also cases of looting in those days. Popular rumor even speaks of the murders of policemen who hastily took safes with money and surviving property under guard.

The official number of victims is 2336 people. Unofficial - up to 13 thousand, even up to 50 thousand. The real one, according to the estimates of the interlocutor of the AIF, Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, head of the tsunami laboratory of the Institute of Oceanology of the Russian Academy of Sciences E. Kulikov, is five or six thousand. The discrepancy between the numbers is due to the fact that in addition to the civilian population, for which accounting is generally simple, there were many military units stationed on the islands, including secret ones, and the statistics on them are unclear.

This tragedy was the impetus for the creation of a tsunami warning service. Severo-Kurilsk was rebuilt. 11 settlements of the Kuril Islands ceased to exist, as they were completely destroyed by the tsunami.
It was 66 years ago. Now do you understand the meaning of these signs installed along the Sakhalin coast?

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

In calm weather and with a westerly wind, they reach Severo-Kurilsk - the smell of hydrogen sulfide and chlorine is impossible not to feel. Usually in such cases, the Sakhalin Hydrometeorological Center transmits a storm warning about air pollution: it is easy to get poisoned by toxic gases. Eruptions in 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 masks to protect their breath and filters for water purification.

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

But in the fall of 1952, the eastern coast of Kamchatka, the islands of Paramushir and Shumshu were on the first line of the elements. The North Kuril tsunami of 1952 became one of the five largest in the history of the twentieth century.

The city of Severo-Kurilsk was destroyed. The Kuril and Kamchatka settlements of Utyosny, Levashovo, Reef, Rocky, Coastal, Galkino, Okeansky, Podgorny, Major Van, Shelekhovo, Savushkino, Kozyrevsky, Babushkino, Baikovo were swept away ...

The population of Severo-Kurilsk before the tragedy was about six thousand people. In Paramushir, on the night of November 4-5, the population was awakened by an earthquake. Furnaces collapsed; dishes and other household utensils fell off the 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 drew attention to the fact that the sea receded from the rocky coast at a distance of about 0.5 km. Those who were previously familiar with the tsunami, mainly fishermen, rushed to the mountains, despite the calm sea.

Hearth underwater earthquakes was relatively close (within the Kuril-Kamchatka deep-water trench). In the Pacific Ocean, 200 kilometers southeast of Petropavlovsk, over the epicenter of the earthquake, the sea ​​wave. 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 estuarine parts of the river valleys were flooded. She had the highest height in the central part of the city, where she rolled along the river valley. A few minutes later, the wave receded into the sea. Having torn off the earth from the rocks along with trees and shrubs, carrying rich prey into the ocean. She licked the outfits of border guards walking along the edge of the coast, watchtowers, boats, boats and kungas, wooden buildings. The bottom of the strait was exposed for several hundred meters. Calm has come.

After 15-20 min. a second, even larger wave, 10 meters high, hit the city. She caused especially severe destruction, washing away all the buildings. Behind the wave, only the cement foundations of houses remained in place. After passing 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 vessels rotated at high speed. Rolling back, the wave hit from the rear into the coastal rampart in front of the port area, on which several houses were preserved, and bypassing the mountain broke 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 a normal life. Not a single line about the tragedy got into the Soviet press: the streets were dressed with kumach, the Soviet people enthusiastically met the 35th anniversary of the Great October Revolution! What is it here North Kuril tsunami! The number of his victims is still unknown, according to official figures, 2336 people died in Severo-Kurilsk alone. And in the museum of the city there are data from independent studies: adults - 6060, children under 16 years old - 1742; total - 7802 people. But these are only victims among the civilian population, but there were also military men, prisoners (and these, in general, no one considered), so we can talk about 13-17 thousand dead

After catastrophes on the site of the city of Severo-Kurilsk, an almost empty area of ​​\u200b\u200bseveral square kilometers formed. Only separate foundations of buildings demolished by the wave, roofs of houses thrown out of the strait, the central gate of the former stadium and a lonely standing monument to the soldiers of the Soviet army remind of the existence of the city here.

In the village of Utesny, all production facilities and buildings were completely destroyed and demolished into the ocean. Only one residential building and a stable remained ...

With the onset of dawn, reconnaissance aircraft from Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky appeared over the islands and photographed the area. Airplanes dropped warm clothes, blankets, tents and food for the population, who were escaping around the fires. Then a significant part of the population was evacuated to Sakhalin.

Bay of Severo-Kurilsk today

Many destroyed settlements and frontier outposts have never been restored. The population of the islands has been greatly reduced. Severo-Kurilsk was rebuilt, moved away from the ocean, as far as the terrain allowed. As a result, he ended up in an even more dangerous place - on the mudflow cone of the Ebeko volcano, one of the most active in the Kuriles. The population of the city today is about 3 thousand people. Catastrophe initiated the creation of USSR warning service tsunami, which is now in a sad state due to beggarly funding. Against this background, the statements of the Russian authorities look ridiculous that, having such a service, we are insured against a catastrophe like 2004 tsunami in Southeast Asia .

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

In Severo-Kurilsk, the expression "to live like on a volcano" can be used without quotes. There are 23 volcanoes on Paramushir Island, five of them are active. Ebeko, located seven kilometers from the city, comes to life from time to time and releases volcanic gases.

In calm and with a westerly wind, they reach - the smell of hydrogen sulfide and chlorine is impossible not to feel. Usually in such cases, the Sakhalin Hydrometeorological Center transmits a storm warning about air pollution: it is easy to get poisoned by toxic gases. Eruptions in 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 masks to protect their breath and filters for water purification.

The site for the construction of Severo-Kurilsk was chosen without 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.

A few hours later, the tsunami wave reached the Hawaiian Islands, 3000 km from the Kuriles.
Flooding on Midway Island (Hawaii, USA) caused by the North Kuril tsunami.

Secret tsunami

The tsunami wave after the earthquake in Japan this spring has reached the Kuril Islands. Low, one and a half meters. But in the fall of 1952, the eastern coast of Kamchatka, the islands of Paramushir and Shumshu were on the first line of the elements. The North Kuril tsunami of 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 settlements of Utyosny, Levashovo, Reef, Rocky, Coastal, Galkino, Okeansky, Podgorny, Major Van, Shelekhovo, Savushkino, Kozyrevsky, Babushkino, Baikovo were swept away ...

In the autumn of 1952, the country lived an ordinary life. The Soviet press, Pravda and Izvestia, did not get a single line: neither about the tsunami in the Kuriles, nor about the thousands of dead people.

The picture of what happened can be restored from the memories of eyewitnesses, rare photographs.

Writer Arkady Strugatsky, who served in those years in the Kuriles as a military translator, took part in the aftermath of the tsunami. He wrote to his brother in Leningrad:

“... I was on the island of Syumusyu (or Shumshu - look for it at the southern tip of Kamchatka). What I saw, did and experienced there - I can’t write yet. I can 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 of Syumusyu, the ocean beats into the rocks-walls of Syumushu. The one who was on Shumushu was on Shumushu that night, remembers how the ocean attacked Shumushu; As on the piers of Shumushu, and on the pillboxes of Shumushu, and on the roofs of Shumushu, the ocean collapsed with a roar; As in the dells of Shumushu, and in the trenches of Shumushu, the ocean raged in the bare hills of Shumushu. And in the morning, Syumusyu, to the walls-rocks of Syumusyu many corpses, Syumusyu, carried the Pacific Ocean. The black island of Shumushu, the island of fear of Shumushu. Who lives on Shumushu 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 ... "

War!

In those years, work on the registration of residents in Severo-Kurilsk was not properly established. Seasonal workers, secret military units, the composition of which was not disclosed. According to the official report, in 1952 about 6,000 people lived in Severo-Kurilsk.

82-year-old South Sakhalin Konstantin Ponedelnikov in 1951 he went with his comrades to the Kuriles to earn extra money. They built houses, plastered walls, helped to install reinforced concrete salting vats at the fish processing plant. In those years, there were many visitors to the Far East: they arrived on recruitment, worked out the period established by the contract.

Tells Konstantin Ponedelnikov:
- It all happened on the night of November 4-5. I was still a bachelor, well, it’s a young thing, I came from the street late, already at two or three. Then he lived in an apartment, rented a room from a family fellow countryman, also from Kuibyshev. Just went to bed - 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.

Konstantin ran out of the house, lit a cigarette. The ground shook palpably underfoot. And suddenly from the side of the shore they heard shooting, screams, noise. In the light of the ship's searchlights, people fled from the bay. "War!" they shouted. So, at least, it seemed to the guy at first. Later I realized: the wave! Water!!! Self-propelled guns went from the sea towards the hills, where the frontier post was stationed. And together with everyone, Konstantin ran after him, upstairs.

From the report of senior lieutenant of state security P. Deryabin:
“... We did not have time to reach the regional department, when we heard a great noise, then crackling from the sea. Looking back, we saw a high water shaft advancing from the sea to the island ... 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 dressed (most in underwear, barefoot) and run into the hills.”

Konstantin Ponedelnikov:
- Our path to the hills lay through a ditch three meters wide, where wooden walkways were laid for the transition. Next to me, panting, ran a woman with a five-year-old boy. I grabbed the child in an armful - and together with him jumped over the ditch, where only the strength came from. And the mother has already moved over the boards.

Army dugouts were located on the hill, where the exercises took place. It was there that people settled down to warm themselves - it was November. These dugouts became their refuge for the next few days.

In place of the former North-Kurilsk. June 1953 of the year

three waves

After the first wave left, many went down to find the missing relatives, to release the cattle from the barns. People did not know: tsunamis have 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 strength and magnitude than the first surged again. People, thinking that everything was already over (many, heartbroken by the loss of their loved ones, children and property), descended from the hills and began to settle in the surviving houses to keep warm and dress themselves. The water, meeting no resistance on its way... rushed onto the land, completely destroying the remaining houses and buildings. This wave destroyed the entire city and killed most of the population.

And almost immediately the third wave swept 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 the Pacific Ocean, 130 km from the coast of Kamchatka. An hour after a powerful (magnitude about 9 points) earthquake, the first tsunami wave reached Severo-Kurilsk. The height of the second, the most terrible, wave reached 18 meters. According to official figures, 2,336 people died in Severo-Kurilsk alone.

Konstantin Ponedelnikov did not see the waves themselves. At first he delivered refugees to the hill, then with several volunteers they went down and saved people for many hours, pulling them out of the water, taking them off the roofs. The real scale of the tragedy became clear later.

- He went down to the city ... We had a watchmaker there, a good guy, legless. I look: his stroller. And he himself lies there, dead. The soldiers pile the corpses on a britzka and take them to the hills, where they either go to a mass grave, or how else they buried them - God knows. And along the coast there were barracks, a sapper military unit. One foreman escaped, he was at home, and the whole company perished. A wave covered them. There was a bullpen, and there were probably people there. Maternity home, hospital... Everyone died.

From a letter from Arkady Strugatsky to his brother:

“The buildings were destroyed, the entire coast was littered with logs, fragments of plywood, pieces of hedges, gates and doors. There were two old naval artillery towers on the pier, they were placed by the Japanese almost at the end of the Russo-Japanese War. The tsunami threw them a hundred meters away. When dawn broke, those who managed to escape descended from the mountains - men and women in linen, trembling with cold and horror. Most of the inhabitants either sank or lay on the shore interspersed 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, ended up on the Amderma steamer, completely crammed with fish. For people, they unloaded half of the coal hold, threw a tarpaulin.

Through Korsakov they brought them 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 they sent everyone back to Sakhalin. There was no question of any material compensation, it’s good if you could at least confirm the experience. Konstantin was lucky: his work boss survived and restored work books and passports ...

fish place

Many destroyed villages were never rebuilt. The population of the islands has been greatly reduced. The port city of Severo-Kurilsk was rebuilt in a new place, higher up. Without carrying out the same volcanological examination, so that as a result the city ended up in an even more dangerous place - on the path of the mud flows of the Ebeko volcano, one of the most active in the Kuriles.

The life of the port of Severo-Kurilsk has always been connected with fish. The work is profitable, people came, lived, left - there was some kind of movement. In the 1970s and 80s, only loafers at sea did not earn 1,500 rubles a month (an order of magnitude more than in similar work on the mainland). In the 1990s, crab was caught and taken to Japan. But in the late 2000s, the Federal Agency for Fishery had to almost completely ban the fishing of king crab. To not disappear at all.

Today, compared to the late 1950s, the population has halved. Today, about 2,500 people live in Severo-Kurilsk - or, as the locals say, in Sevkur. Of these, 500 are under the age of 18. In the maternity ward of the hospital, 30-40 citizens of the country are born annually, whose place of birth is Severo-Kurilsk.

The fish processing factory provides the country with stocks of navaga, flounder and pollock. Approximately half of the workers are local. The rest are visitors ("verbota", recruited). They earn about 25 thousand a month.

Selling fish to fellow countrymen is not accepted here. Its a whole sea, and if you want cod or, say, halibut, you need to come to the port in the evening, where the fishing ships are unloaded, and simply ask: “Listen, brother, wrap the fish.”

Tourists in Paramushir are still only a dream. Visitors are accommodated in the "Fisherman's House" - a place that is only partly heated. True, a thermal power plant was recently modernized in Sevkur, and a new pier was built in the port.

One problem is the inaccessibility of Paramushir. More than a thousand kilometers to Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, three hundred to Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky. The helicopter flies once a week, and then on condition that the weather will be in Petrik, and in Severo-Kurilsk, and at Cape Lopatka, which ends Kamchatka. Well, if you wait a couple of days. Maybe three weeks...

Severo-Kurilsk lurks on the very outskirts of Russia - on the Far Eastern island of Paramushir. Due to its strategically important location, this section of the Kuriles has always been marked by the presence of the military. But that's not how he got in. world history: The North Kuril tsunami of 1952 was one of the five largest in the history of the twentieth century. We will tell about it from the words of Kaluga residents - eyewitnesses of the events.

Only half a century later, documents about what happened on a cold November day in the Far East became available to the general public. What is known to everyone?

The earthquake began at five in the morning on November 5, 1952. The city of Severo-Kurilsk was destroyed. The Kuril and Kamchatka settlements of Utyosny, Levashovo, Rifovy, Kamenisty, Coastal, Galkino, Okeansky, Podgorny, Major Van, Shelekhovo, Savushkino, Kozyrevsky, Babushkino, Baikovo were swept away ... The tsunami was caused by a powerful earthquake (according to various sources from 8.3 to 9 magnitudes on the Richter scale), which occurred in the Pacific Ocean an hour earlier, 130 kilometers from the coast of Kamchatka. Three waves up to 15-18 meters high claimed the lives of 2336 people.

For a long time being classified, the Kuril-Kamchatka tsunami of 1952 became one of the legends of our family. At that time, my grandfather served in Paramushir, and his family - a wife with two children - lived in a military camp.

At the time of the beginning of the tragedy, the grandfather was at sea, and the grandmother and children slept in a Finnish house, one of many others that sheltered military families. Grandmother recalled that she woke up because the youngest son was crying in the crib. She felt several jolts, from which the walls of the house began to shake, and, being a native Chernihiv, together with her two children, she decided ... to sit out under an oak table. He's strong, she reasoned, he'll hold out. And then one of the walls, the one at which the baby's bed was located, collapsed.

As she was, in a nightgown, a man's jacket and felt boots, with one child around her neck and another, nursing, in her arms, she ran out of the house and realized that something terrible was happening. From all sides, up towards the barracks, towards the military unit, half-dressed people were running, shouting: "Water! Water!"

An eighteen-meter wall of water was advancing on the city with relentless speed, covering the sky. A Korean village with dilapidated houses was located on the very shore of Paramushir. That's why she got it in the first place. Rare residents and their houses were not carried away by the first wave, while the second washed away all traces of human presence from the shore.

There were practically no survivors - the element swallowed everything that came in its way, breaking a stone in a second, scattering houses like chips. Grandmother recalled: the water came ashore with such force that children were knocked out of the hands of mothers running towards the hills. And washed into the ocean.

In parallel with the nightmare on land, no less drama played out in ocean waters. Women, barely recovered from one shock, were horrified by the news: ships that had set out on a voyage, on which there were many Russian military men, were overtaken by a tsunami.

Human illiteracy also played its role in the tragedy. When the first wave subsided, people who had no idea about the nature of the tsunami began to go down to find the missing relatives, let the cattle out of the barns, warm up, check and take the documents. Alas, they did not know: the tsunami has a long wavelength, and sometimes tens of minutes pass between the first and second.

In one of the police reports of that time, it is said: "For 20 - 30 minutes (the time of two almost simultaneous waves of huge force) in the city there was a terrible noise of seething water and breaking buildings. Houses and roofs of houses were thrown, like matchboxes and swept out to sea. The strait separating the islands of Paramushir and Shumshu was completely filled with floating houses, roofs and other debris.

To imagine the strength of the second wave, I will give an example: the pantry of the State Bank, a reinforced concrete block, weighing 15 tons, was torn off a rubble stone - a huge boulder, 4 square meters in size. m and dropped by 8 meters.

One of the officers running past offered help to the grandmother - to bring the youngest child. The frail young woman, panic-stricken, yielded. The man disappeared from sight almost immediately, and only then did she realize that she did not even remember his face. The crying daughter squeezed her throat with all her might, and the woman, not understanding the road, rushed to run.

Already in the unit, she rushed to the military for help: it was necessary to find not only a husband, but also a child. Among the harsh Kuril nature the baby would simply not have been able to survive without the help of adults. But she was not alone: ​​all around, the men who were overwhelmed to the limit reassured, as best they could, civilians who had suddenly lost their homes and families, and sometimes even their minds.

The soldiers who rushed to help found the son, they found him thrown on a meager bush in an open vest. Alive. My grandmother ran into her husband about the lists, which included the names of those who survived. They met - and could not identify each other. The stress was so strong that already a year later, in a relatively calm atmosphere, she continued to have dreams about a wall of water rapidly approaching the shore ...

The scale of the tragedy became clear only the next day. There were many victims, most of all among civilians who simply did not have time to understand what was happening. The people gathered at the hills resembled the dead, their faces were white with excitement and fear.

Some of those washed away by the second and third waves were picked up in open water vessel. Sometimes it was possible to save not only adults, but also kids clinging to them. The evacuation of people began the next day. Did mom know that her favorite writer Arkady Strugatsky at that moment was literally a few hundred meters from their place of refuge with their grandmother, participating in rescue operation on the neighboring and slightly less affected Shushma, and wrote feverish lines to his brother from there ...

Steamboats from Petropavlovsk and Vladivostok arrived in the Second Kuril Strait. There were 40 vessels of different carrying capacity under loading here. Until November 11, the entire population was evacuated. And those who did not survive were carried ashore by waves for more than one day.

Those events in Severo-Kurilsk, despite the prohibitions, were never forgotten. There is even a commemorative plaque on which the following lines are engraved:

"What a terrible terrible noise was coming from the sea

How unsteady the earth suddenly became

When two rolled huge comb grief

And the cry of the people prayed for salvation

It was after this catastrophe that the government of the USSR decided to create a tsunami warning system in the country.

The photo shows a view of the port part of Severo-Kurilsk, where the whole city was before the 1952 tsunami.

Natalia KONSTANTINOVA.

P.S. A few years ago, Ren-TV made a short film about that tragedy, which has gone far into history. We invite you to watch their version of this story.