The State Department has confirmed that at least four Americans died due to the earthquake in Nepal that has been confirmed to have killed more than 4,000 people. Most of the dead were Nepalis but people from dozens of countries around the world also died.
The Americans who died included a medic, a film-maker and a Google engineer. At the time of writing, the fourth American had not been identified.
Marisa Eve Girawong
A 28-year-old from New Jersey, Girawong was a base camp doctor for Madison Mountaineering, a Seattle-based climbing company. She was on Mount Everest when an avalanche hit the company’s camp. Guide Garrett Madison confirmed her death in a dispatch sent from the mountain, sending word to the company that “base camp had been devastated and that one of our members, our beloved doctor Eve Girawong, was in critical condition.
“Over the next few hours we learned that she had passed away and it was very hard on all of us,” he continued. “Our hearts go out to the family of Eve Girawong. She is loved by all of us in base camp and a great addition to our team and helped us tremendously. She will be missed greatly. We are very sorry for her loss.”
Girawong made her passion for climbing plain from both her résumé and social-media life: she earned master’s degrees in both medical science and mountain medicine, and had climbed Mount Rainier and Mount Washington. Her Facebook page charted her adventures around the world, including her excitement at arriving in Nepal.
In a post dated 5 April, above a photo of forest, clear skies and the Himalayas, she wrote: “I can’t think of anything that makes me as happy or peaceful as being out here.”
Tom Taplin
A 61-year-old film-maker, producer and photographer from Evergreen, Colorado, Taplin had been filming a documentary on Everest’s base camp for nearly two weeks when the avalanche struck.
His wife, Cory Freyer, told NBC her husband was a “larger-than-life person”. Freyer, who with Taplin had lived in Santa Monica, California, said: “All of his friends, and he has so many friends, every one of them is just devastated. Shocked.”
“He was such a well-loved individual,” she told Reuters, adding that Taplin loved mountains and extreme landscapes and was “always up for adventure”. The couple had traveled to Antarctica and Patagonia, she told ABC, adding: “Those are the kinds of places that inspired him with his film-making, his videography.”
Jonathan Taplin, his cousin and a professor at USC, wrote on Facebook: “He was a brave guy who supported great conservation efforts.”
Most recently, Taplin had worked as an executive producer on The Beaches of Agnès, a well-received French documentary directed by Agnès Varda.
Dan Fredinburg
A veteran Google executive who lived near San Francisco, Fredinburg, 33, had been climbing Everest with three colleagues. According to the company, none of his companions were injured.
An engineer by training, Fredinburg had served in several roles over eight years, most recently as head of privacy for Google X, the ambitious research division. His sister Megan confirmed that he had died on his Instagram account, writing that the avalanche had given her brother a fatal head injury.
“All our love and thanks to those who shared this life with our favorite hilarious strong willed man,” she wrote.
The Observer’s Carole Cadwalladr, who trekked with Fredinburg to Everest base camp, remembered him as “a charismatic, outspoken, social media-obsessed Google executive who was pretty much always where he liked to be: at the centre of attention”.
The actor Sophia Bush, a former girlfriend, wrote on Instagram “there are no adequate words” and that Fredinburg was “funny” and “fearless”. Her post also expressed condolences for the families of Nepali and other victims.
“He was one of my truest friends,” Bush wrote. “He was an incredible brother, a brilliant engineer, and a damn good man. I’m devastated and simultaneously so deeply grateful to have known and loved him, and to have counted him as one of my tribe.”
