Deadly quake in Nepal

An earthquake measuring 7.8 on the Richter scale struck Nepal on April 25, killing more than 7,000 people in Nepal, India, Tibet and Bangladesh, injuring 10,000 and displacing, possibly, millions. These numbers are expected to rise as emergency workers report from remote towns. Road damage caused many regions to be inaccessible except by helicopter, hampering rescue efforts.

With its epicenter in the Gorkha district — specifically, at a spot between Pokhara, in central Nepal, and Kathmandu 90 miles southeast — the quake also caused an avalanche on Mount Everest, 100 miles northeast of the capital, killing at least 18 people at Base Camps on both the Nepal and China sides.

With aftershocks as high as 6.7 shaking the region, hundreds of thousands of people in Kathmandu began living in tent cities away from buildings, due to the loss of their homes or in fear of aftershocks.

The quake also destroyed numerous historic buildings across Nepal, including Kathmandu’s 19th-century, 9-story Dharahara Tower, now reduced to its base, as well as temples, palaces and pagodas dating to the 16th to 20th centuries at the Durbar squares in Kathmandu, Bhaktapur and Patan.