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Dozens of tents lie damaged after an avalanche plowed through Mount Everest base camp, killing at least 18 people following the 7.9-magnitude earthquake in Nepal.(Photo: Azim Afif, European Pressphoto Agency)
As survivors made their way off Mount Everest Sunday, some warned that dozens of people who were on the mountain may still be missing after a deadly earthquake near Kathmandu triggered an avalanche.
At least 18 people are dead and dozens more were injured in the avalanche set off by the massive magnitude-7.8 earthquake that has left some 2,500 dead in Nepal and neighboring countries.
Among them: Google executive Daniel Fredinburg, who was part of a Google team attempting to create a Google street map of the trek to Everest Base Camp, and Marisa Eve Girawong, an emergency room physician's assistant serving as a camp doctor for the Seattle-based Madison Mountaineering expedition company.
The 2013 climbing season was just starting in earnest, as climbers began their attempts as winter winds subside and before the summer monsoon season.
Before Saturday's earthquake, the single deadliest incident in the history of Everest came one year ago, when an avalanche claimed the lives of 16 Nepalese sherpas, ending the 2014 climbing season.
In 2013, 658 reached the peak of Mount Everest, with hundreds more making an attempt.
USA TODAY
More avalanches likely on Everest after quake
"The snow swept away many tents and people," said Gyelu Sherpa, a sunburned guide among the first group of 15 injured survivors to reach Kathmandu, according to the Associated Press.
Many in the group of 15 to make their way off the mountain were injured, but none were believed to be facing life-threatening injuries.
Aftershocks — including one that measured at magnitude 6.7 — were complicating the rescue effort on Sunday, with more snow and rocks cascading down the mountainside.
"We were sitting here in base camp, feeling the situation was getting better," climber Carsten Pederson told CNN. "And then suddenly, we felt the aftershock. And immediately after the shock, we hear avalanches from all the mountains around us."
Alex Gavan, a mountain climber who was at the base camp, wrote on Twitter on Sunday that "large areas of base camp look like after a nuclear blast. great desolation. high uncertainty among people."
things quiet now but large areas of base camp look like after a nuclear blast. great desolation. high uncertainty among people.
— Alex Gavan (@AlexGAVAN) April 26, 2015
Bhim Bahadur Khatri, 35, a cook and a Sherpa who was among the group of 15 to make their way off Everest, said he was working in a meal tent when a huge wall of snow overwhelmed him. He said he lost many friends.
"I managed to dig out of what could easily have been my grave," he told the Associated Press. "I wiggled and used my hands as claws to dig as much as I could. I was suffocating, I could not breathe. But I knew I had to survive."
USA TODAY
Relief efforts to find survivors intensify amid powerful aftershocks
The quake struck at about noon Saturday — just over a year after the deadliest avalanche on record hit Everest, killing 16 Sherpa guides on April 18, 2014.
Witnesses said Saturday's avalanche began on Mount Pumori, a 22,966-foot-high mountain just a few miles from Everest, gathering strength as it headed toward base camp and the lower reaches of Everest's climbing routes. Numerous climbers remained stranded Sunday on routes above base camp, but teams in contact by satellite telephones said no one was believed to be in danger or running short of supplies.
Azim Afif, 27, the leader of a climbing team from University of Technology Malaysia, estimated that about 80% of the people at the base camp had left by midafternoon Sunday.
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Eve Girawong was climbing Mount Everest with Seattle-based Madison Mountaineering when she was killed by an avalanche. It was triggered by a massive earthquake that killed thousands of others in Nepal. VPC
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