Meteor damage in Urals city
Meteor damage in Urals cityReuters

More than 24,000 workers were hard at work over the weekend clearing up the damage caused by the explosion of a meteor slamming into Russia’s Ural mountains region.

The space rock landed in the central part of the country on Friday, with a blast that wounded approximately 1,200 people, many in the city of Chelyabinsk and including some 200 children.

The damage extended much farther, with the massive boom blowing out windows in thousands of buildings throughout the region. 

The meteor that streaked across the Russian skies exploded with a force 30 times greater than the Hiroshima nuclear bomb, NASA scientists said.

They are still searching the area -- and beyond -- to find as many fragments from the space rock as possible for further study.

The powerful blast was picked up by 11 out of 45 infra-sound stations of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) network. The organization’s stations are designed to track atomic blasts around the globe.

Most people were hurt by flying glass. People had rushed to their windows to see what the sudden  bright flash of light in the sky was all about -- and the boom that followed shattered the glass, sending the needle-sharp shards flying everywhere.

“Window frames and glass have been restored on an area of 37,800 square meters. A total of 122 potential hazardous facilities have been inspected,” the Emergencies Center said in a statement, released via RIA Novosti.

By 6:00 a.m. Sunday local time, window glass had been replaced in 1,658 residential buildings, 34 health care organizations, 62 education institutions and four social facilities, according to the Center.