PHOTO: School in Malovodnoye village damaged by 5.4 quake

Ostrovskiy School building in Malovodnoye village was damaged by the 5.4 magnitude earthquake that hit Almaty oblast on May 1. Around 500 children were transferred from the block with collapsed and cracked walls to the main school building, Tengrinews.kz reports. “Children now have to study in in three shifts. We are afraid to even come close to the building where they used to study before,” the parents say. Head of the village administration Nurlan Dzhalpakov said that authorities allocated 17 million tenge ($116 thousand) for reinforcement of buildings after the flood right before the quake. 28 houses are in emergency condition after the shocks. People are forced to live in yurts (Kazakh national nomad tents). There are currently 24 yurts in the village with two or three families living in each. Eight mobile trailers have been given to the citizens who cannot go back to their houses. 30 additional tents will be given in the coming few days. There are no casualties or completely destroyed houses. A special commission is holding an investigation, calculating the damage and inspecting damaged houses. The experts do not preclude that there may be more emergency buildings. The amount of compensation to the villagers is not yet known. As per head of Department on Mobilization Preparedness, Civil Defense, Prevention and Liquidation of Emergency Situations and Acts of God Sergey Salgayev, the villagers' belongings in the damaged houses did not suffer any damage. He said that all repairs will be completed by the end of summer. As per the European-Mediterranean Seismological Center, 10 earthquakes hit Almaty region on May 1-2 with magnitudes ranging from 5.4 to 3.2.