Homes, businesses, temples have been destroyed. It's all because of a major 7.8 magnitude earthquake that violently shook the Southeast Asian country on Saturday. Nepal's landscape is rugged, it's mountainous. There are villages near the quake's epicenter that are hard to get to, with roads blocked and unreliable communications. Some areas are reportedly wiped out, either flattened by the quake or buried in mud slides. The Nepalese government says it's sending helicopters to try to reach people in remote places.

 

On Mount Everest, the climber at base camp got video of an approaching avalanche shortly after the quake hit. You can see the snow rolling over him in a dense cloud. This climber did survive. At least 18 others didn't. Dozens of people there were injured. Across Nepal last night, the death toll was approach 4,000. At least 72 people died in neighboring India. China reported 20 deaths.

 

Power blackouts in the Nepalese capital of Kathmandu weren't helping. It's hard to say how many people were injured. Officials said they numbered more than 7,000. Hospitals short on supplies are literally overflowing with patients. That's part of the reason why CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta, who traveled to Nepal, was asked to operate.

 

We're in the sort of drive area of, of a building that's not, it wasn't actually functioning as a hospital. This has become a hospital because there's been there has been such tremendous demand. You can see people who are, who were lined up. There've been ambulances the time have come in from time to time, taxicabs. There was an 8-year-old girl who needed an operation. There was just such demand. There was 40 to 50 neurosurgical patients in this particular area, many of them outside.

 

I want to show you, I don't know if you can see this, because they gave permission to show this scan here. But just take a quick look, you know, this is a CT scan. You're, they're able to do CT scans here now, which is a big plus. And over here, just this may be more than you can see, but that white area over there, that's the blood collection. It's called an epidural hematoma. It's basically bleeding on top of the brain. If it's not treated, that can lead to someone dying or certainly having significant neurological problems. So that was why the operation was performed, the operation that we were doing to try and remove that blood collection.

 

But again, you know, they asked for me to help. They're asking anybody to sort of roll up their sleeves and help because of the tremendous demand right now.