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  1. #1
    Senior Member JohnDoe2's Avatar
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    7.8 Magnitude Earthquake in Nepal Kills Hundreds and Levels Buildings

    7.8 Magnitude Earthquake in Nepal Kills Hundreds and Levels Buildings

    By ELLEN BARRY and GARDINER HARRIS APRIL 25, 2015

    SLIDE SHOW|8 Photos

    Earthquake Strikes Near Nepal’s Capital

    Credit Thomas Nybo for The New York Times

    NEW DELHI — An earthquake with an estimated magnitude of 7.8 shook Nepal on Saturday near its capital, Katmandu, flattening sections of the city’s historic center and trapping sightseers in a 200-foot tower that crumbled into a pile of bricks.

    A spokesman for Nepal’s Home Ministry, Laxmi Prasad Dhakal, said that the preliminary death toll stood at 888, nearly all in the valley around Katmandu, and that thousands of people had been injured. Trekkers reported a major avalanche on Mount Everest, where two people were reported dead, according to tourism officials. In addition, 34 deaths had been reported in India.


    The earthquake struck just before noon, and residents of Katmandu ran into the streets and other open spaces as buildings fell, throwing up clouds of dust, and wide cracks opened on paved streets and the walls of city buildings.

    Overflowing hospitals were treating injured patients on the streets, and Nepal’s leading television station, its studios crushed, was broadcasting from the pavement outside.


    By midafternoon the United States Geological Survey had counted 12 aftershocks, one of which measured at a magnitude of 6.6.


    Kanak Mani Dixit, a Nepalese political commentator, said he had been having lunch with his parents when the quake struck. The rolling was so intense and long-lasting that he had trouble getting to his feet, he said. He helped his father and an elderly neighbor to safety in the garden outside and then had to carry his elderly mother.


    “And I had time to do all that while the quake was still going on,” Mr. Dixit said. “It was like being on a boat in heavy seas.”


    The nine-story Dharahara Tower, which was built in 1832 as a watchtower on the orders of the queen, collapsed, Mr. Dixit said. Witnesses there said more than 200 people had bought tickets to climb up to a viewing platform on the eighth story, and that several dozen were likely to have been on the platform when the earthquake hit. “Scores probably died in this place,” Mr. Dixit said.

    Epicenter of earthquake
    with an estimated
    magnitude of 7.8
    CHINA
    Smaller quakes in
    the hours afterward
    NEPAL
    Mount Everest

    Pokhara
    Areas of
    strong shaking

    Katmandu
    INDIA
    100 miles



    By The New York Times; satellite image by NASA/U.S.G.S. Landsat via Google Earth

    RELATED COVERAGE





    Joydeb Chakravarty, managing director of the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency in Nepal, said he had been grocery shopping when the quake struck. “And suddenly, everything started collapsing around us,” Mr. Chakravarty said. “The shelves all came down, the food items all crashed down. We were barely able to get out the emergency exit.”

    Seismologists have long feared a big earthquake in western Nepal, where there is pent-up pressure between tectonic plates grinding up against one another. Though there have been a series of earthquakes in the region over the last century, none resulted in a full release of seismic energy, said Ganesh K. Bhattari, a Nepali expert on earthquakes now living in Denmark.

    Photographs posted on social media showed people digging in the debris of collapsed structures. Kashish Das Shrestha, a photographer, said people were trapped in the rubble and could be heard crying out as rescuers tried to make their way into buildings.


    “Everywhere there are people on the streets, people crying, people stuck in rubble, people trying to help,” Mr. Shrestha said.


    He described severe damage to parts of the palace complex in Vasanthapura Square, the site of palaces and temples that date to the 11th century. The old section of the city is a warren of narrow lanes and historic structures. “Oh my God, the entire Vasanthapura is in rubble,” Mr. Shrestha said.

    Hospitals in Katmandu were reporting the arrival of patients with broken limbs.


    For hours after the earthquake, many residents sat in the road, afraid to go back indoors. Many said they would spend the night outside, despite the cold.


    The earthquake set off avalanches on Mount Everest, where several hundred trekkers were attempting an ascent, according to climbers there. Via Twitter, Alex Gavan, a hiker at base camp, described “huge earthquake then huge avalanche,” and “running for life from my tent.” Nima Namgyal Sherpa, a tour guide at base camp, described one avalanche as “huge” and said it had caused many injuries.


    “Many camps have been destroyed by the shake and wind from the avalanche,” Mr. Sherpa, the base camp manager for Asian Treks, wrote in a post on Facebook. “All the doctors here are doing our best to treat and save lives.”


    Two people died on Mount Everest after the earthquake, and eight more were badly injured, said Tulasi Prasad Gautam, an official in the state tourism department.


    Tremors from the quake were felt across northern India, rattling bookcases and light fixtures as far away as Delhi.

    Electricity was switched off for safety reasons in the state of Bihar, where three deaths were reported in one district, Rajiv Pratap Rudy, India’s minister of skill development, told reporters in New Delhi. Two other deaths were reported in a second nearby district.


    Historically, the region has been the site of the largest earthquakes in the Himalayas. A 2005 earthquake in Kashmir and a 1905 earthquake in Kangra resulted in a death toll of more than 100,000 people, according to the United States Geological Survey.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/26/wo...andu.html?_r=0

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  2. #2
    Senior Member JohnDoe2's Avatar
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    Nepal Quake: Over 1,000 Dead, History Razed, Everest Shaken

    By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS APRIL 25, 2015, 12:11 P.M. E.D.T.



    A man is freed from the rubble of a destroyed building in Katmandu.Credit Narendra Shrestha/European Pressphoto Agency

    KATHMANDU, Nepal — A powerful earthquake struck Nepal Saturday, killing at least 1,180 people across a swath of four countries as the violently shaking earth collapsed houses, leveled centuries-old temples and triggered avalanches on Mt. Everest. It was the worst tremor to hit the poor South Asian nation in over 80 years.

    At least 1,130 people were confirmed dead across Nepal, according to the police. Another 34 were killed in India, 12 in Tibet and two in Bangladesh. Two Chinese citizens died in the Nepal-China border. The death toll is almost certain to rise, said deputy Inspector General of Police Komal Singh Bam.


    It was a few minutes before noon when the quake, with a preliminary magnitude of 7.8, began to rumble across the densely populated Kathmandu Valley, rippling through the capital Kathmandu and spreading in all directions -- north toward the Himalayas and Tibet, south to the Indo-Gangetic plains, east toward the Brahmaputra delta of Bangladesh and west toward the historical city of Lahore in Pakistan.




    A collapsed building in Nepal's capital, Katmandu.CreditZhou Shengping/Xinhua, via Associated Press

    Shrish Vaidya, a businessman, was with his family in his two-story house on the outskirts of Kathmandu, when the quake struck.

    "It is hard to describe. The house was shaking like crazy. We ran out and it seemed like the road was heaving up and down," he told The Associated Press. "I don't remember anything like this before. Even my parents can't remember anything this bad."


    A magnitude-6.6 aftershock hit about an hour later, and at least 16 aftershocks continued to jolt the region for hours. Residents ran out of homes and buildings in panic. Walls tumbled, trees swayed, power lines came crashing down and large cracks opened up on streets and walls. And clouds of dust began to swirl all around.


    "Our village has been almost wiped out. Most of the houses are either buried by landslide or damaged by shaking," said Vim Tamang, a resident of Manglung village near the epicenter. He said half of the village folks are either missing or dead. "All the villagers have gathered in the open area. We don't know what to do. We are feeling helpless," he said when contacted by telephone.


    Within hours of the quake, hospitals began to fill up with hundreds of injured people. With organized relief and rescue largely absent, many of the injured were brought to hospitals by friends and relatives in motorized rickshaws, flatbed trucks and cars. It was also residents themselves who used bare hands, crowbars and other tools to dig through rubble and rescue survivors.

    In Kathmandu, dozens of people gathered in the parking lot of Norvic International Hospital, where thin mattresses were spread on the ground for patients rushed outside, some wearing hospital pajamas. A woman with a bandage on her head sat in a set of chairs pulled from the hospital waiting room.


    Doctors and nurses hooked up some patients to intravenous drips in the parking lot, or gave people oxygen.


    As night fell, thousands of scared residents continued to camp out in parks and compounds, too scared to return to their homes. Meteorologists forecast rain and thunderstorms for Saturday night and Sunday.


    Prime Minister Sushil Koirala, who was attending a summit in Jakarta, tried to rush back home but made it as far as Bangkok where his connecting flight to Kathmandu was canceled because the capital's international airport was shut down.

    While the extent of the damage and the scale of the disaster are yet to be ascertained, the quake will likely put a huge strain on the resources of this poor country best known for Everest, the highest mountain in the world, and its rich Hindu culture. The economy of Nepal, a nation of 27.8 million people, is heavily reliant on tourism, principally trekking and Himalayan mountain climbing.


    A mountaineering guide, Ang Tshering, said an avalanche swept the face of Mt. Everest after the earthquake, and government officials said at least 10 climbers were killed and 30 injured. Their nationalities were not immediately known.


    Carsten Lillelund Pedersen, a Dane who is climbing the Everest with a Belgian, Jelle Veyt, said on his Facebook page that they were at Khumbu Icefall , a rugged area of collapsed ice and snow close to base camp at altitude 5,000 meters (16,500 feet), when the earthquake hit.


    He wrote on his Facebook that they have started to receive the injured, including one person with the most severe injuries who sustained many fractures.


    "He was blown away by the avalanche and broke both legs. For the camps closer to where the avalanche hit, our Sherpas believe that a lot of people may have been buried in their tents," he wrote in English. "There is now a steady flow of people fleeing basecamp in hope of more security further down the mountain"


    The U.S. Geological Survey put the magnitude of the quake at 7.8. It said the quake hit at 11:56 a.m. local time (0611 GMT) at Lamjung, about 80 kilometers (50 miles) northwest of Kathmandu. Its depth was only 11 kilometers (7 miles), the largest shallow quake since the 8.2 temblor off the coast of Chile on April 1, 2014.




    People took refuge at a school in Katmandu after a large earthquake struck Nepal. CreditNavesh Chitrakar/Reuters

    The shallower the quake the more destructive power it carries.

    A magnitude 7 quake is capable of widespread and heavy damage while an 8 magnitude quake can cause tremendous damage. This means Saturday's quake — with the same magnitude as the one that hit San Francisco in 1906 — was about 16 times more powerful than the 7.0 quake that devastated Haiti in 2010.


    "The shallowness of the source made the ground-shaking at the surface worse than it would have been for a deeper earthquake," said David A. Rothery, professor of planetary geosciences at the Open University in Milton Keynes, north of London.


    A major factor in the damage was that many of the buildings were not built to be quake-proof. An earthquake this size in Tokyo or Los Angeles, which have building codes for quake resistance, would not be nearly as devastating.


    The power of the tremors brought down several buildings in the center of the capital, the ancient Old Kathmandu, including centuries-old temples and towers.


    Among them was the nine-story Dharahara Tower, one of Kathmandu's landmarks built by Nepal's royal rulers as a watchtower in the 1800s and a UNESCO-recognized historical monument. It was reduced to rubble and there were reports of people trapped underneath.


    Hundreds of people buy tickets on weekends to go up to the viewing platform on the eighth story, but it was not clear how many were up there when the tower collapsed. Video footage showed people digging through the rubble of the tower, looking for survivors.

    The Kathmandu Valley is densely populated with nearly 2.5 million people, and the quality of buildings is often poor.

    A Swedish woman, Jenny Adhikari, who lives in Nepal, told the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet that she was riding a bus in the town of Melamchi when the earth began to move.

    "A huge stone crashed only about 20 meters (yards) from the bus," she was quoted as saying. "All the houses around me have tumbled down. I think there are lot of people who have died," she told the newspaper by telephone. Melamchi is about 45 kilometers (30 miles) northeast of Kathmandu.


    Nepal suffered its worst recorded earthquake in 1934, which measured 8.0 and all but destroyed the cities of Kathmandu, Bhaktapur and Patan.


    The sustained quake also was felt in India's capital of New Delhi and several other Indian cities.


    India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi called a meeting of top government officials to review the damage and disaster preparedness in parts of India that felt strong tremors. The Indian states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Sikkim, which share a border with Nepal, have reported building damage. There have also been reports of damage in the northeastern state of Assam.


    Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif offered "all possible help" that Nepal may need.

    http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2015...arthquake.html

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  3. #3
    Senior Member JohnDoe2's Avatar
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    Nepal earthquake triggers deadly avalanche on Mt. Everest


    CAPTIONEverest avalanche triggered by quake



    Survivors pulled from the rubble


    Death toll climbs in Nepal quake

    Devastating quake is Nepal's worst in decades


    By CAROL J. WILLIAMS contact the reporter


    'Running for my life from my tent,' Everest climber Alex Gavan reported after avalanche triggered by quake

    Everest climber Daniel Mazur after earthquake and avalanche: 'Please pray for everyone'


    10 dead and others stranded at Khumbu Icefall after Everest avalanche triggered by earthquake


    A powerful earthquake in Nepal on Saturday triggered an avalanche above the most popular Mount Everest base camp at the height of climbing season, killing at least 10 people and stranding others at the perilous Khumbu Icefall, Nepalese officials and climbers reported.

    "Running for life from my tent," Romanian climber Alex Gavan said via Twitter, describing the avalanche as huge.


    Climber Daniel Mazur tweeted from Everest Base Camp that it had been "severely damaged" and that his team was trapped.

    "Please pray for everyone," he said.

    This photo provided by climber Azim Afif shows the scene after an avalanche triggered by a massive earthquake swept across Everest Base Camp in Nepal on Saturday (Azim Afif / Associated Press)


    "Aftershock!" Mazur tweeted moments later. "#Everest team is in camp 1, hanging on. #Icefall route destroyed."

    Ten bodies had been recovered from the avalanche and an unknown number of other climbers were still unaccounted for after their tents were inundated, Gyanendra Shrestha of the Nepal Tourism Ministry's mountaineering department told news agencies in Katmandu, the Nepalese capital.


    There were at least 1,200 people at the base camp, including cooks, porters and guides, the Ekantipur website reported from Katmandu.

    lRelatedASIA
    Death toll rising across subcontinent from devastating 7.8 Nepal quake SEE ALL RELATED

    The Khumbu Icefall is the forward edge of a glacier just above the base camp that a year ago sheared off a wall of snow and ice, killing 16 Nepalese guides. The April 18, 2014, disaster was one of the worst in the modern history of the mountain that has been scaled by more than 4,000 people since New Zealander Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay first reached the summit in 1953.

    The tourism ministry was struggling to assess the damage and casualties on the climbing routes of the world's highest mountain because communications were knocked out in much of Katmandu, said Mohan Krishna Sapkota, a senior ministry official.

    "The trekkers are scattered all around the base camp and some had even trekked further up," Sapkota said. "It is almost impossible to get in touch with anyone."


    The avalanche struck between the base camp and the icefall on the most traveled route to the 29,035-foot summit, Ang Tshering of the Nepal Mountaineering Assn. reported.


    Other expeditions took to social media to report that they were safe.


    "Walking into Ebc was coincidentally filming when the avalanche struck," Danish climber Jelle Veyt wrote in his Twitter post that included images from the avalanche scene.

    "Our team is safe, waiting for news of others."


    The Times of India quoted Saroj Kumari, the national police force officer attempting to be the first woman from the agency to reach Everest's summit, as saying her five-person team had escaped injury and found safe refuge.

    http://www.latimes.com/world/la-fg-earthquake-nepal-everest-20150425-story.html
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  4. #4
    Senior Member JohnDoe2's Avatar
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    In response to earthquake, T-Mobile makes calling and texting free to Nepal

    TmoNews
    So that customers can keep in touch more easily, T-Mobile has decided to offer free calls and texts to and from Nepal across four of its brands. Customers of T-Mobile, MetroPCS, GoSmart and Walmart Family Mobile can now keep in touch with loved ones in ...
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