NO TOWER TOO TALL, NO EVEREST TOO HIGH - Earthquake shakes Nepal close to noon and rumbles across borders

TT, New York Times News Service, Reuters and AP, April 25: A deadly earthquake shook Nepal and sent tremors through India today, killing hundreds, trapping sightseers in a 200-foot Kathmandu tower that crumbled into a pile of bricks and touching off an avalanche on Mount Everest.

Its magnitude estimated at 7.9, the quake killed at least 1,341 people in Nepal, more than 300 of them in Kathmandu city and most of the rest in the surrounding valley. Two of them were Indians, one the daughter of an Indian embassy employee.

The Everest avalanche killed at least 18 and buried part of the base camp, raising concerns about the hundreds of climbers and sherpas.

Fifty-four deaths were reported in India - 38 in Bihar, 11 in Uttar Pradesh and 5 in Bengal - twelve in Tibet and four in Bangladesh. The quake, with its epicentre in an area of central Nepal between Kathmandu and Pokhara, was just 2km deep, intensifying its destructive force.

Kathmandu residents 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 buildings. The city's international airport was shut down.

Overflowing hospitals were treating the injured on the street, and Nepal's leading TV station, its studios crushed, was broadcasting from the pavement outside.

Kanak Mani Dixit, a political commentator, said he was 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 neighbour to safety in the garden outside and then had to carry his mother.

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

Around 300,000 foreign tourists were estimated to be in Nepal for the spring trekking and climbing season, and officials were overwhelmed by calls from their friends and relatives.

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

It was a few minutes before noon when the quake began to rumble across the densely populated Kathmandu Valley, rippling through Kathmandu and spreading in all directions - north towards the Himalayas and Tibet, south to the Indo-Gangetic plains, east towards Bengal, the Northeast and Bangladesh, and west towards Lahore. "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 Britain.

Indian tourist Devyani Pant was in a Kathmandu coffee shop with friends when "suddenly the tables started trembling and paintings on the wall fell on the ground".

"I screamed and rushed outside," she said. "We are now collecting bodies and rushing the injured to the ambulance. We are being forced to pile several bodies one above the other to fit them in."

Joydeb Chakravarty, managing director of the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency in Nepal, was grocery shopping when the quake struck.

"Suddenly, everything started collapsing around us," he 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.

Although 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. Bhattarai, a Nepali expert on earthquakes now living in Denmark.

Many worried that there would be vast loss of life in urban areas, where multi-storey concrete buildings have been hurriedly erected in recent years. But the earthquake may prove less devastating than feared, because it struck during the afternoon when schools were not in session.

Building collapses in Kathmandu appeared largely confined to brick structures in the city's historic area, rather than concrete high-rises.

Photos on the social media showed people digging in the debris of collapsed structures. Kashish Das Shrestha, a photographer, said people had been 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," 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. "Oh my God, the entire Vasanthapura is in rubble," Shrestha said.

For hours after the earthquake, many in the city remained sitting in the roads, afraid to go back indoors. Many residents said they would spend the night outside despite the cold and darkness.

Tremors were felt across northern and eastern India, rattling bookcases in Delhi and swaying ceiling fans in Calcutta.

Historically, the region has been the site of the largest earthquakes in the Himalayas. A 2005 quake in Kashmir and a 1905 temblor in Kangra claimed more than 100,000 lives. Nepal's worst earthquake in 1934 killed more than 8,500.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi chaired an emergency meeting and dispatched a military air transporter with three tonnes of supplies and a 40-member disaster response team to Nepal.