[1] The town was devastated by an earthquake on May 28, 1995, which measured 7.1 on the Richter scale, killing 1,989 out of a total population of 3,977.
[2] An oil-producing town in northern Sakhalin, many buildings in Neftegorsk had been built with low-quality concrete and were not designed to withstand seismic activity.
[3] As is common in remote Russian industrial towns, almost the entire population lived in a small number of high-density four-to-five-story apartment buildings.
Because of the comprehensive nature of the death and destruction in Neftegorsk, it was decided not to be rebuilt, and a memorial was instead constructed in the area.
[4] The monument contains aerial pictures of the town both before and immediately after its destruction, allowing visitors a sense of scale of the disaster.