17 Feb 2013

Meteorite clean-up continues

6:51 am on 17 February 2013

A big clean-up operation involving up to 9000 personnel is continuing in the Urals of Russia following a meteor strike there on Friday morning.

A shockwave created when the meteor exploded, blowing out windows and rocking buildings around Chelyabinsk, injuring more than 1000 people, mostly from flying shards of glass.

Some 50 people remain in hospital.

The BBC reports the meteorite landed in a lake near Chebarkul, a town in the Chelyabinsk region.

Emergencies Minister Vladimir Puchkov toured Chelyabinsk city on Saturday to assess the damage.

The shockwave damaged an estimated 200,000 sq metres of windows.

President Vladimir Putin said he had thanked God that no big fragments had fallen in populated areas.

The Chelyabinsk region, about 1,500km east of Moscow, is the location of many factories, a nuclear power plant and an atomic waste storage and treatment centre.

Meteor strikes are rare in Russia but one is thought to have devastated an area of more than 2000 sq km in Siberia in 1908.