Russia quake victims set up home in their garages

NEVELSK,Russia-Since an earthquake shook this Russian town on Sakhalin Island in the Pacific Ocean, Ivan Popov has been living in a garage.The crude shack feels much safer than the town's Soviet-built apartment blocks, many of which crumpled in the quake."I don't ever want to live in an apartment again," the former sailor said.Nevelsk suffered the worst from an earthquake which hit the Russian Pacific island just over a month ago.Closer to Japan's northern island of Hokkaido than it is to mainland Russia, Nevelsk, near Sakhalin's southern tip, is more than 6,000 km (3,700 miles) east of Moscow.The Aug. 2 quake had a magnitude of 6.4 on the Richter scale, powerful enough to cause destruction wherever it struck. The death toll was relatively low. A total of four people were killed-two on the day and another two who died later in hospital.But the true scale of the damage only emerged in the days afterwards, as people in this fishing and mining town discovered that, even if their apartment blocks were still standing, they were no longer safe to live in.Initially, officials said 2,000 people were made homeless. Now, that figure has gone up to at least 8,000, or about 30 percent of Nevelsk's population.Residents are living with relatives and friends, in their weekend cottages outside town, in childrens' homes, garages and even railway compartments.Russia is growing rich from its energy resources and few places have more than Sakhalin. The island has received billions of dollars in investment as Russian firms and foreign majors including Exxon and BP develop its oil reserves.But the earthquake has shown that for all the wealth, Sakhalin still suffers from two legacies of the Soviet past: shoddily-built housing and a creaking bureacracy that was slow to handle the aftermath.Russian President Vladimir Putin sacked Sakhalin governor Ivan Malakhov soon after the quake, accusing local officials of failing to provide shelter for the homeless in Nevelsk.

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