A large hill crashes into the Bureya River caused by 'a meteorite'

Experts are at odds over the cause of an extraordinary landfall amid reports of hot rocks and extraterrestrial meteorite fragments on a 160 metre-high hill partially now damming the Bureya, a tributary of the Amur River. 

Some experts believe the phenomenon maybe a landslide but this is disputed especially by those who have visited the remote site, some 1,300 km by road from regional capital Khabarovsk. 

Alexey Maslov, the head of Verkhnebureinsky district, said after witnessing the newly formed hill: 'The riverbed is blocked by a bulk, about 600-to-800 metres wide.

‘The height is from 80 to 160 metres above the ice level. 

‘There is no radiation. 

‘An object entered at a sharp angle, pulled down a mound and spread it along the river bed. 

‘It is not clear what it is: maybe an explosion, a bomb, or a falling airliner.’

Yet there have been no reports of rocket tests that went astray here, let alone plane crashes. 

Those who have seen the carnage insisted ‘it cannot be man-made’, he said.

His view is that this was a meteorite strike from a’huge’ lump of space rock block 40 metres of the river channel. 

'We are trying to find the explanation for this incident. I insist that it was a meteorite,’ he said.

Evgeny Zubko, a cosmic dust expert from the School of natural Sciences at the Far Eastern Federal University, said an unnoticed  meteorite is a possible cause.

‘Local residents noted the arrival of a blast wave, (so) the meteorite version is to be clarified. 

‘Whether it will be possible to find the fragments of a meteorite depends on the parameters of the fall - and good luck.’

Those who ventured here made videos of the phenomenon which probably formed in the first two weeks of December some 73km (45 miles) from the remote village of Chekunda.

‘They either started some major building site or a UFO collapsed here,’ said a voice on one video. 

‘This mountain was a kilometre in size - and it just vanished. And the Bureya River …is blocked.’

On another video, observers comment on how ‘trees slid down from the top of the hill (leaving) a naked desert’.

A man waves his hand standing barely visible on the debris to show the sheer scale of the landfall. 

Large rocks were claimed to be ‘meteorite pieces’ and tests will be conducted.

Hunters Anton Ivanov and Alexander Makan found the dramatically changed landscape on 14 December. 

'You don't come across this every day,’ said Ivanov.

'Such scale, such force.

'There is lots of earth, thousands of tons. 

'It can be seen that something flew here, touched the top of the hill and landed in the water.…

'It smells like hydrogen sulphide and vapour comes out in some places. 

'We even found a spot on the very top where there are warm stones, we used them to keep our hands warm. 

'It looks like it was very hot there.

‘The ice edges are slim as if they were in boiling water.' 

Aleksei Makhinov, regional chairman of the Russian Geographic Society, suggested it was a landslide possibly caused by seismic activity. 

'It happens very often in the (Russian) Far East,’ he said.

‘The entire coast of the Sea of Okhotsk is covered with these landslides when half a mountain falls down.’

But he believes this was a ‘seismic landslide’.

‘Cracks formed in rock for natural reasons and the cause of the landslide could have been an earthquake,’ he said.

‘A meteorite could have been the reason too but it is unlikely.

‘The level of water will increase, a lake will form, and water will either flow above the edge or, most likely, it will find a way and flow through the rocks in the body of the landslide.’

For now the Bureyskaya hydro power station reservoir downstream is receiving less water. 

There are warnings of flooding upstream because of the semi-blockage. 

Head of the Institute of Astronomy of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Boris Shustov, expressed doubt about a meteorite suggesting the havoc was wrought by ‘just a landslide’.

A space object would have been registered by ground based tracking systems. 

'I have looked at the data on the records of all world services, and nothing like that was present.’