CHELYABINSK (AP):

A small army of workers set to work yesterday to replace the estimated 200,000 square metres of windows shattered by the shock wave from a meteor that exploded over Russia's Chelyabinsk region last Friday.

The astonishing Friday morning event blew out windows in more than 4,000 buildings in the region, mostly in the capital city of the same name and injured some 1,200 people, largely with cuts from the flying glass.

Forty of the injured remained hospitalised yesterday, two of them in serious condition.

Power OF 20 Hiroshima bombs

Regional governor Mikhail Yurevich on Saturday said that damage from the high-altitude explosion estimated to have been as powerful as 20 Hiroshima bombs — is estimated at 1 billion rubles (US$33 million). He promised to have all the broken windows replaced within a week.

But that is a long wait in a frigid region. The midday temperature in Chelyabinsk was minus-12C (10F), and for many the immediate task was to put up plastic sheeting and boards on shattered residential windows.

More than 24,000 people, including volunteers, have mobilised in the region to cover windows, gather warm clothes and food and make other relief efforts, the regional governor's office said. Crews from glass companies in adjacent regions were being flown in.

In the town of Chebarkul, 80 kilometres (50 miles) west of Chelyabinsk city, divers explored the bottom of an ice-crusted lake looking for meteor fragments believed to have fallen there, leaving a six-meter-wide (20-foot-wide) hole.