MOSCOW – A shower of falling objects, tentatively identified as fragments of a meteorite, streaked through the sky in western Siberia early on Friday, damaging buildings across a vast swath of territory. More than 400 people were reported to have been injured, most from breaking glass.
But hours after the objects fell to earth, emergency officials had reported no deaths.
Yelena Smirnykh, a spokeswoman for the Ministry of Emergency Situations, told Ekho Moskvy radio that she believed the meteorite broke apart and fell in several places. Another government expert, who spoke to Moscow FM radio station, said he believed it may have been a bolide, a type of fireball meteor that explodes in the earth’s atmosphere because of its composition or angle of entry and can be observed from the ground.
However, the governor of the Chelyabinsk region reported that a search team had found an impact crater on the outskirts of a city about 50 miles west of Chelyabinsk, which would indicate the meteor did not explode in the atmosphere. Several fragments were also reported to have struck around the city of Satka.
A small asteroid, known as 2012 DA14, is expected to pass close to earth later on Friday, NASA reported on its Web site. It was not clear whether the meteorite event in the Ural Mountains was in any way related.
Dozens of amateur videos of the event were broadcast on Friday morning. They showed bright objects streaking through a clear morning sky, leaving a thick trail of white vapor.
Dozens of amateur videos of the event were broadcast on Friday morning. They showed bright objects streaking through a clear morning sky, leaving a thick trail of white vapor.
Video clips from the city of Chelyabinsk showed an early morning sky illuminated by a brilliant flash, followed by the sound of breaking glass and multiple car alarms apparently triggered by the impact, which was powerful enough to shatter dishes and televisions inside people’s homes.
“I saw a flash in the window, turned toward it and saw a burning cloud, which was surrounded by smoke and was going downward – it reminded me of what you see after an explosion,” said Maria Polyakova, 25, head of reception at the Park-City Hotel in Chelyabinsk, which is 950 miles east of Moscow.
She said the explosion occurred shortly thereafter, shattering the thick glass doors on the hotel’s first floor. She said the hotel was evacuated, but that there was no panic. Emergency officials in Chelyabinsk reported that at least four people were injured by broken glass at a school, according to the Interfax news agency. Authorities said windows facing the point of impact broke throughout the city.
“Now we have many calls about trauma, cuts and bruises,” Igor Murog, a deputy governor of the Ural region, told Interfax.
A video made outside a building in Chelyabinsk captured a blast strong enough to break windows far from the point of impact and the astonished voices of witnesses who were uncertain what it was they had just seen.
“Maybe it was a rocket,” said one man, who rushed outside onto the street along with his co-workers when the object hit, far out of sight. A man named Artyom, who spoke to the Moscow FM radio station, said the explosion was enormous.
“I was sitting at work and the windows lit up and it was as if the whole city was illuminated, and I looked out and saw a huge streak in the sky and it was like that for two or three minutes and then I heard these noises, like claps,” he said. “And then all the dogs started barking.”
On impact, he said balconies shook and windows shattered. He said he did not believe it was a meteorite. “We are waiting for a second piece, that is what people are talking about now,” he said.
There were reports that falling objects were visible as far away as Yekaterinburg, 125 miles southeast of Chelyabinsk. A police official told Interfax that authorities had identified one meteorite’s point of impact, in a sparsely populated area around 50 miles outside the city of Satka.
Siberia stretches the length of Asia and there is a history of meteor and asteroid showers there. In 1908 a powerful explosion was reported near the Tunguska River in central Siberia, its impact so great that trees were flattened for 25 miles around. Generations of scientists have studied that event, analyzing particles that were driven into the earth’s surface as far away as the South Pole. A study published in the 1980s concluded the object weighed a million tons.
In the United States, NASA alluded to the Tunguska incident when it said that it was watching closely an asteroid 150 feet in diameter expected to whiz past earth on Friday at a distance of around 17,200 miles, the closest for many decades.
In a statement on its Web site, NASA said on Friday that there was no risk that the asteroid – known as 2012 DA14 – would collide with earth. But it would pass within “the belt of satellites in geostationary orbit, which is located 22,200 miles above earth’s surface.”
The asteroid is set to pass earth at around 2:25 p.m. E.S.T., NASA said. “At the time of closest approach, the asteroid will be over the eastern Indian Ocean, off Sumatra,” the agency said.
“Asteroid 2012 DA14 will not impact earth, but if another asteroid of a size similar to that of 2012 DA14 were to impact earth, it would release approximately 2.5 megatons of energy in the atmosphere and would be expected to cause regional devastation,” NASA said. The asteroid will not be visible to the naked eye, the agency added.
Referring to the “Tunguska Event,” NASA said the impact of an asteroid just smaller than 2012 DA14 “is believed to have flattened about 825 square miles of forest in and around the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in what is now Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russia.”
