Tashkent earthquake in 1966
| Tashkent earthquake in 1966 | |||
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| Coordinates | 41 ° 12 '0 " N , 69 ° 10' 48" E | ||
| date | April 26, 1966 UTC | ||
| Time | 05:22:49 UTC | ||
| Magnitude | 5.2 M S | ||
| depth | 3-5 km | ||
| epicenter | Tashkent | ||
| country | Soviet Union | ||
| dead | 8th | ||
| Injured | several hundred | ||
The Tashkent earthquake on October 26, 1966 was a natural disaster in the Soviet Union . It had its epicenter in the center of the city of Tashkent and occurred at 5:23 a.m. in the morning. It claimed eight lives and destroyed the entire city.
The quake
At that time, a million people lived in the capital of the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic . The considerable damage to the structure was caused by the shallow depth of the earthquake focus of around 5 km. On an area of around ten square kilometers, mostly vertical impacts destroyed practically everything. Strong vibrations of the ground with a frequency of around 2.5 Hz lasted about 11 seconds. Experts attribute the relatively small number of fatalities to the absence of devastating horizontal tremors. Even the dilapidated mud houses in the old town did not collapse for the most part, but were only more ruined. Most of the injured were residents of newer multi-story apartment buildings who had jumped in a panic from one of the upper floors. On the other hand, wall and roof collapses as well as falling components only affected around a quarter of the injured. There were still deaths after heart attacks in aftershocks .
High visit
The Tashkent chief seismologist Valentin Ivanovich Ulomow (1933-2017), a geophysicist with a doctorate in 1964 , reported that on the morning after the earthquake in the city it was not possible to make a phone call, he was picked up by a police officer in the car with the remark that he was Arrested for the earthquake. The trip ended in Sharaf Rashidov's office , who was the first secretary of the Communist Party of Uzbekistan. This first man in Uzbekistan had a visit from Brezhnev and Kosygin that evening on April 26th . So Ulomov had not been arrested, just ordered to report. His reporting, based on maps, was followed closely and hardly interrupted. Brezhnev was the first to ask about the location of the conference location relative to the epicenter. Ulomov showed him the two points on the map. Screams from outside, not far from the building of the Central Committee , would have provoked Brezhnev to his second question: “Was that a tremor?” The hosts who entered had to say no. A goal had just been scored on the football pitch that was not affected by the quake. Brezhnev replied: "Hmm, comrade Raschidow, since there is no earthquake here, the gate counts." Kosygin now - as the second man in the Soviet Union - also dared a joke and pointed out to the geophysicist that several aftershocks in Tashkent had an advantage: " As a seismologist, these small tremors are just what you need. You can study the seismic situation more closely on site. ”Central Committee Secretary Raschidow quickly made capital out of the course of the conversation for the rebuilding of his crumbling adobe city of Tashkent; even went up to the planned underground construction.
The long working day had finally tired the head of state of the Soviet Union a little. So Brezhnev said: "Well, I will now go to rest in my sleeping bag under a tree."
The consequences
More than 14 square kilometers of living space, 236 administration buildings, around 700 commercial and public catering establishments, 26 municipal companies, 181 educational institutions, 36 cultural institutions, 185 medical care houses and 245 industrial buildings were destroyed. In Tashkent, 78,000 families (more than 300,000 people) were homeless.
The city was completely rebuilt by 1970. The major project was supported by builders from all over the Soviet Union. For many years, some of the new quarters bore the names of the Soviet cities from which the energetic helpers had traveled to Tashkent.
In the Tashkent memorial Muschestvo (Russian bravery ) the natural disaster is remembered.
Artists took the natural event as their theme:
- Encounter with Tenderness Film 1967 by Tatjana Liosnowa based on a story by Alexander Borschtschagowski
- Today mom! Fantastic novel by Sergei Lukjanenko and Juli Burkin (* 1960) from 1993.
Web links
- Article in the Internet Archive (Russian)
- Article at RIA Novosti (Russian)
- Valentin Ulomow (1933-2017): List of Publications (Russian)
- Articles in letters about Tashkent (Russian)
- Earthquake in Tashkent in 1966: the photo, the number of dead Article on Nextews
- Philipp Meuser in the Tagesspiegel : Open-air museums of Soviet housing construction
- Olim devona: Earthquake in Central Asia