A documentary filmmaker from Colorado was among four Americans killed in a Mount Everest avalanche triggered by the earthquake that shook Nepal.
Thomas Ely Taplin, 61, was working on a film about the community of climbers at base camp and had been there only a short time when the magnitude-7.8 quake struck, his wife, Cory Freyer, told The Associated Press on Monday.
“His passions were adventure travel and extreme landscape types of films,” Freyer said in a telephone interview. The couple lived in Evergreen, Colorado, most of the year, she said.
Eighteen people were killed by gusts of wind that blasted through Everest’s base camp during the temblor. The overall death toll from Saturday’s temblor is more than 4,000.
The U.S. State Department said at least four Americans have died in Nepal’s earthquake. Spokesman Jeff Rathke said all the U.S. citizens were killed at the Mount Everest base camp. He identified two as Taplin and Vinh B. Truon.