The incident took place on April 20 at 3.45PM. The landslide volume was 1,5 million cubic meters. In an hour, 60 people from the special mobile battalion of Ecology and Extreme Situations Ministry started a rescue operation. They extracted five bodies from underground, and ended their work the next day.

A state commission headed by Prime Minister Nikolay Tanaev investigates circumstances of the incident. The government is providing provisions and drugs to people who lost their homes, and are building new houses for them. Russian Extreme Situations Ministry representatives helped their Kyrgyz colleagues by erecting shelters.

However, the Kyrgyz government admitted in its application to the UN for assistance that it is experiencing a serious shortage of medicines, gasoline, foodstuffs, building materials, financial and human resources. Kyrgyz officials asked the international community for financial and technical support.

“In March, we forecasted possible landslides in Uzgen, Bazar-Korgon, Aksy, Alay, and Suzak districts of the republic,” said Anarkul Aytaliev, director of prognosis and monitoring department of Kyrgyzstan’s Ecology and Extreme Situations Ministry. “In particular, we insisted on moving of 30 families from the Kara-Taryk village. Three days before the tragedy happened, local administration representatives warned them of the danger, but people wouldn’t listen. They just had nowhere to go.”

The government noted the adverse environmental situation in the Naryn region of Kyrgyzstan. Nadyr Momunov, advisor to the Prime Minister and head of the information department, informed that Nikolay Tanaev, Prime Minister, and Satyvaldy Chyrmashev, ecology and extreme situations minister, are about to visit Naryn to personally see how security measures there are progressing.

As Mr. Chyrmashev stated, landslides and spring floods in zones where uranium waste is kept may cause an environmental catastrophe. Tailing dumps in Mailuu-Suu are in a very bad condition,” Kyrgyz ecology and extreme situations minister said, “If a natural disaster destroys one of them, over than 3 million people in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan will be in radioactive contamination zone.”

In the Mailuu-Suu district, there are 23 tailing dumps and 13 mountain dumps containing about two million tons of uranium waste and other radioactive substances that have been preserved from the late 1960s. According to the Kyrgyz Ecology and Extreme Situations Ministry, \"from 1991 to 1998, repairs in these objects were rarely done and not well enough.\" Specialists say its complete rehabilitation requires about forty million dollars.

The Mailuu-Suu district is considered a high-seismic zone. Local experts note the danger of uranium-keeping areas in the event of earthquakes. Besides, radioactivity level on this territory significantly exceeds the permissible limits.

The Kyrgyz government, which does not have sufficient means for repairs in tailing dumps, plans to establish a trust foundation where grants from foreign investors will be accumulated. The main supporters are Russia and the U.S., who have been helping Kyrgyz officials to restore uranium storing places around Kadjy-Say town in Issyk-Kul.

Prevention of damage to uranium tailing dumps in Mailuu-Suu and of radioactive pollution in Central Asia is estimated to cost US$200 million. This was communicated in a statement of the special Kyrgyz parliament commission that has researched the problem in detail along with scientists and experts of OSCE, World Bank, and other international organizations. They concluded that frequent landslides and earthquakes in Mailuu-Suu could leak uranium waste to the Naryn river. As result, the whole region settled by millions people could be poisoned.

The World Bank is planning to grant five million dollars to Kyrgyzstan for restoration of tailing dumps in the Jalal-Abad region. The Governments of Russia and the U.S. also intend to allot in total US$640,000 to support a project on the rehabilitation of uranium waste storing areas in the Kadjy-Say district of Issyk-Kul region. This money is obviously not enough to make those territories secure. Local people are not too optimistic, they say only future generations will be able to solve this problem. Meanwhile, weather forecasts in Kyrgyzstan are not consoling. Meteorologists predict abundant rains for the next several days.