PETROPAVLOVSK-KAMCHATSKY, April 26 (RIA Novosti) - More than 1,500 rescue workers and 260 units of equipment have been summoned to Russia's Far Eastern towns hit by a powerful earthquake last week, emergency services said Wednesday.
The earthquake with a magnitude of 7.8 points on the Richter scale, the strongest since 1900 in the area, hit the sparsely populated Koryak Autonomous Area on the Kamchatka Peninsula April 21.
About 40 people were injured and infrastructure was seriously damaged in the towns of Tilichiki and Korf, which are nine time zones from Moscow.
Spokesmen said the Emergency Situations Ministry had delivered about 20 metric tons of humanitarian aid in the past 24 hours alone, which included tents, blankets, food, and electric equipment. Neighboring regions provided 28 metric tons of humanitarian aid.
An Emergency Situations Ministry meeting in Moscow chaired by First Deputy Minister Yury Vorobyov decided that a decision on rebuilding facilities affected in the earthquake would be made by May.
"All decisions should be prepared by the middle of May so that all communications, energy and infrastructure facilities, [as well as] schools can be rebuilt," Vorobyov said.
The governor of the neighboring Primorye Region ordered the transfer of 500,000 rubles (about $18,200) to a special account opened by the Koryak administration.
The administration said a total of 865 people had been evacuated from the quake-hit areas to Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, the regional capital in the south of the peninsula, and the capital of the autonomous area, Palana, where temporary accommodation has been set up and medical help is available.
