CHELYABINSK, Russia -- A small army of workers set to work Saturday to replace the estimated 124 square miles of windows shattered by the shock wave from a meteor that exploded over Russia's Chelyabinsk region.

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.

Fifteen of the injured remained hospitalized on Saturday, one of them in a coma, the regional health ministry said, according to the Interfax news agency.

Regional governor Mikhail Yurevich on Saturday said damage from the high-altitude explosion — estimated to have the force of 20 atomic bombs — is estimated at $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 10 F, 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 mobilized 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, 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 20-foot-wide hole. Emergency Ministry spokeswoman Irina Rossius told Russian news agencies the search hadn't found anything.

Police kept a small crowd of curious onlookers from venturing out onto the icy lake, where a tent was set up for the divers.

Many of them were still trying to process the memories of the strange day they'd lived through.

Valery Fomichov said he had been out for a run when the meteor streaked across the sky shortly after sunrise.

"I glanced up and saw a glowing dot in the west. And it got bigger and bigger, like a soccer ball, until it became blindingly white and I turned away," he said.

In a local church, clergyman Sexton Sergei sought to derive a larger lesson.

"Perhaps God was giving a kind of sign, so that people don't simply think about their own trifles on earth, but rather look to the heavens once in a while."

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The meteor that tore across the skies over Russia's Chelyabinsk region early Friday led some suspicious Russians to conclude that it was a stealth military attack by either the U.S. or China, while others believed the end of the world was nigh, according to published reports.

The meteor triggered a shock wave that injured nearly 1,000 people, blew out windows and caused the roof of a zinc factory's warehouse to collapse.

Chinese rocket?
In the video below, a voice can be heard saying, "What the hell? ... Something fell. Do you hear?" as soon as the blast took place, according to Foreign Policy. About a minute later, another speaker says, "It must have been a rocket or something," followed by another voice that announces: "It must have been the Chinese!"

A U.S. weapon test?
In the political realm, Russian Liberal Democrat leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who is known for his controversial statements, blamed the blast not on a meteor, but on the United States testing a new weapon.

“You’re like some primitive tribe. What meteorite?” he said, according to RT.com. “When something falls – it’s man-made. People are warmongers and provocateurs.”

Earlier this week, in the wake of North Korea's nuclear test, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry called the foreign ministers of the countries that deal with Pyongyang. While ministers in South Korea, Japan and China took Kerry's call, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov did not pick up the phone. A spokesman later said Lavrov's schedule made it impossible for him to answer Kerry's call.

But the missed connection led Zhirinovsky to claim that Kerry's call was meant “to warn Lavrov about the plot and that it may affect Russia,” according to RT.com.

Did air defense shoot it down?
Russia's space agency Roskosmos confirmed the falling object was a meteor, but early reports in local media tried to explain the trail of the fireball by saying the meteor had been shot by the country's air defenses, according to RT.com.

The local newspaper Znak quoted a source in the military saying a missile blew the meteor to pieces at an altitude of about 12 miles, it said.

Another military source quoted by the Regnum news agency said the vapor condensation trail of the meteor proves it had been intercepted and shot, according to RT.com.

The region's Emergency Ministry, however, denied the reports.

Considering the Russians' superstitious nature, more theories are likely to crop up in the coming days. For now, conspiracies and eschatological fears continue to dominate.

Area resident Valya Kazakov told The Associated Press that the brilliant flare and sudden explosion caused older women in his neighborhood to fear that the world was ending.

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Nuclear-like in its intensity, Russia meteor blast is largest since 1908