NEW YORK (AP) – It’s now a given that most every natural disaster, even in a location as remote as Nepal, will be captured by gripping amateur video. The challenge for the Smithsonian Channel was taking this material and making it mean something more.
The network’s one-hour special, “Nepal Quake: Terror on Everest,” airs Monday at 9 p.m. ET.
More than 8,700 people were killed and thousands more injured in the April 25 earthquake and a May 12 aftershock.
Finding video evidence of the disaster wasn’t hard. Two Nepalese teenagers were recording material for their YouTube channel on a Kathmandu street when the earthquake struck, and they turned their camera around to capture buildings toppling, birds flying frantically and people trying hard to stay on their feet with the ground convulsing beneath them.
Video taken from a Mount Everest base camp showed a wall of crushed ice and snow rushing toward hikers, eventually killing 19 of them. Since then, that clip has been viewed some 25 million times, said David Royle, executive vice president of programming and production at the Smithsonian Channel.