Magnitude 7.8 Earthquake Devastates Nepal

by JASmius



Hot off the wires:

A powerful earthquake struck Nepal Saturday, killing at least 906 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 eighty years.

At least 876 people were confirmed dead in Nepal, according to the police. Another twenty were killed in India, six in Tibet and two in Bangladesh. Two Chinese citizens died at 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 magnitude-6.6 aftershock hit about an hour later, and smaller aftershocks continued to jolt the region for hours. Residents ran out of homes and buildings in panic. Walls tumbled, large cracks opened up on streets and walls. Towers collapsed and clouds of dust began to swirl all around.

The U.S. Geological Survey put the epicenter fifty miles northwest of Kathmandu at a shallow depth of only eleven miles, which enhanced the shaking and consequent destructiveness of the temblor.  It was the same size as the 1906 San Francisco quake and sixteen times more powerful than the 2010 quake that devastated Haiti.


UPDATE: The death toll has risen to 1,394, with reports still coming in from outlying areas, which will take longer precisely because of the devastation.

Here's a thought: Should that death figure actually be considered light given the magnitude of the seismic event and the poverty (and thus the lack of earthquake-resistant buildings) of the country it hit?  Had it struck any even semi-populated area in neighboring India or Pakistan or China or Bangladesh, the fatalities would be in the tens or hundreds of thousands.

That's not, of course, to imply anything like "Whew, good thing it hit Nepal instead," but still.....