When a meteor exploded over the Ural Mountains, the windows of over 4,000 buildings in Russia's Chelyabinsk region also shattered. That's more than 1 million square feet of glass.
Over 1,200 people were injured because of the shockwave, most of them by flying glass. Forty are still in the hospital, state news agency RIA Novosti reports, with two in critical condition though no official deaths due to the meteor have been reported.
Russia's frigid winters stopped Napoleon cold in his tracks and at 10 degrees F, the situation is also urgent for families in the region today. Chelyabinsk's governor, Mikhail Yurevich, promised to have all the windows replaced in a week, a venture that would cost an estimated 1 billion rubles (or $33 million) and may seem like a long wait for residents.
In the meantime, citizens are busy putting up plastic sheets and boarding up windows. More than 24,000 volunteers have assembled to help cover windows, gather and distribute warm clothes, food and other supplies, reports the Huffington Post. Crews of glass companies from neighboring regions are also being flown into the city.
The Russian Academy of Sciences said the meteor entered the atmosphere at about 15 degrees, traveling at 33,000 mph and exploded 18 to 32 miles above the surface of the earth but NASA pinned its numbers closer to 40,000 mph and 12 to 15 miles high. It left a long white streak of smoke that was visible from up to 125 miles away.
Sensors estimated that the meteorite released the same energy as 300,000 tons of TNT (more than 18 times the amount released by the bomb in Hiroshima), making it the largest recorded incident since the Tunguska event in 1908. The 130-foot object that catalyzed the Tunguska event exploded over Siberia between three and six miles above the earth. It knocked over about 80 million trees in a mostly-uninhabited area, and remained undocumented until a team of Soviet Academy of Sciences researchers surveyed it.
Numerous dashboard cameras caught footage of the meteor as it streaked through the sky, providing researchers many valuable clues as to its entry and trajectory, a phenomenon that confused many users who watched the event minutes after it happened on YouTube. With widespread corruption and lawlessness on Russia's roads, a dash-cam culture developed, Discovery reports, and such cameras are now the norm for Russian drivers.
In Chebarkul, a town about 50 miles away from Chelyabinsk city, divers combed the bottom of a lake whose icy surface had a 20-foot hole punched into it, looking for fragments of the meteor. Police kept curious onlookers away from the lake, where divers had set up a tent.
