7.8 Earthquake Ravages Nepal, Death Toll Rises To 1500

21st Century Wire says…

Nepal was rocked this morning – as the ground shook, and buildings collapsed in the ancient capital, city of Kathmandu, including centuries-old temples and towers, said resident Prachanda Sual, reports USA Today.

See full report below…

USA Today

A powerful earthquake — the country’s worst in 80 years — rocked mountainous in Nepal on Saturday, killing more than 1,400 people and leveling buildings and centuries-old temples. Dozens if not hundreds remained trapped under mounds of rubble.

Hospitals in the capital of Katmandu were so crowded that many of the injured were treated outside in the open, according to local media. The magnitude-7.8 quake, which shook a wide swath of northern India and Tibet, also triggered avalanches in the Himalayas, killing at least 10 people on Mount Everest.

Nepal police said at least 1,457 people were killed.

The dead included at least 256 people in Katmandu alone, according to myrepublica.com, a Nepal news agency, quoting the Home Affairs Ministry. An emergency Cabinet meeting designated 29 districts as crisis zone, the ministry said.

Around 180 bodies were pulled from the ruins of the nine-story Dharhara tower in the center of the capital, China’s official Xinhua News Agency reports. It said about 200 were feared trapped in the rubble of the tower in the city’s historic Basantapur Durbar Square.

City hospitals were quickly overwhelmed. Dozens of people were 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 had hooked up some patients to IV drips in the parking lot, or were giving people oxygen.

Outside Nepal, at least 34 were killed in India, 12 in Tibet and two in Bangladesh. Two Chinese citizens died in the Nepal-China border. Given the scale of the destruction, the death toll is almost certain to rise, said Laxmi Dhakal, Nepal’s Home Ministry official.

The quake struck before noon about 50 miles northwest of Katmandu in an area that the U.S. Geological Survey calls one of the most seismically hazardous regions on Earth. It is at the spot where the India plate collides with the Eurasia plate in a process that has created the towering Himalayas…

Continue this story at USA Today

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