Newsroom. Poppy harlow joining you live in new york. We begin with breaking news from overseas. The number of people dead and injured in the hours since the huge earthquake that hit nepal is already staggering and expected to rise significantly. Heart of the disaster is the city of 3 Million People kathmandu. Almost 2,500 people are believed dead in nepal, alone. More fatalities in india, china. Even people on the side of mt. Everest were not safe. [ bleep ]. [ bleep ]. [ bleep ]. [ bleep ]. [ bleep ]. [ bleep ]. That is what it felt like to be inside of this. At least 17 climbers dead at the base camp when the earthquake triggered massive avalanches. It is the start of climbing season there. About 1,000 people were on the mountain when it started to shake. The initial earthquake was enormous. It measured a 7. 8 magnitude and throughout the night and today, survivors have reported feeling more very powerful aftershocks. Our team has just arrived in nepal. Were joined now from the capital of kathmandu where its before 4 00 in the morning. If you can hear me what are you seeing what are your First Impressions on the ground there . Reporter poppy, despair here. Outside the airport, there are so many people each with a very different story. Some are waiting for their luggage. Theyve been waiting for hours. Cant leave the airport because there are no taxis. They have no means to leave this air. Outside, further outside the airport, theres a makeshift shelter of sorts. The area where families come to meet. Arrive. This has been turned into a makeshift many surrounding villages completely lost their homes. They have nowhere else to go. We spoke to them they said they came here [ inaudible ] we just lost our sumnina udas on the ground. That gives you a sense of what its like there, even our cell phone connection to us was not Strong Enough to last. You can imagine what the search and rescue teams are going through. As soon as we get her reconnected well bring in more of her reporting on the ground. It is absolutely devastating. As i said, more than 2,500 people in nepal, alone, have lost they lives. That number expected to rise significantly. And one of those lost when a wall of snow buried the route to mt. Everest. Google executive dan fredonburg. He was an avid climber, selfdescribed edd add venturer. Earlier we spoke with his girlfriend and best friend. Just by making the choices that he made, i think it was always unintentional but he had this way of making people around him just feel special. Without even trying. And make people feel like they could accomplish anything that they wanted, and that, you know, they hadnt accomplished enough. That there was more that they could do and there was more that they could be because every Single Person around him was able to feel special and amazing and hes brought out the best version in me and id say hes brought out the best version in norm and everyone around him is just he constantly makes you want to be the best version of yourself and thats without trying. Thats just by the actions that he would take. The choices that he would make. So he truly lived by doing and by example. And its part of who he was. Its what made him happy. He wanted to be back there after the devastation of the year before and making those choices and saying i wanted the choices i make im making because these are the things that make me happy, make me feel complete. Thats truly inspiring. And truly contagious. I mean id say it is the one thing i will take away from knowing him is that just happiness is important and thats what he strived for. These are nepalese prayer scarves that dan gave us before he left and its part of a ceremony to give people safe passage on the mountain. And today were wearing them to honor dan. And his passage that hes going through right now. Id say to honor everybody in nepal thats experiencing loss and devastation. Our thoughts with them and all of the families who have lost people their love in this tragic earthquake. With me right now on cnn is john wood hes the founder of room to read focuses on educating kids around the world. Hes also a good friend of mine and ive worked with the organization. And the reason why i called you and wanted you to come on today is because i remember the story, 1998 you quit microsoft as an executive, you go to nepal with a sack of hundreds of books and that then becomes this global charity. Room to read. So this story of the essence of it is nepal. Yeah, we started in nepal. Were now working in almost 20,000 communities around the world to get kids literate make sure girls also go to school because girls are often left behind. Nepal is the country of our irt birth. Its a difficult day for us at room to read because we have over 100 employees in nepal. Some have left Family Members. Some of them are sleeping in their vehicles because theyre afraid to be back in their homes. So its been a tough 48 hours for our whole team own our hearts just go out to the people of nepal. 1,100 schools and libraries you have in nepal. Opened 1,100 schools in nepal and 3,700 libraries. A quarter of those schools and nearly half those libraries are in places in the quake zone. It will be difficult the next few weeks as we assess what happened. A lot of communities are off the grade we dont know whats happened. Thats a point you made earlier thats so important, the number of 2rkz,500 deaths in nepal, you dont think thats close because weve not heard from the rural parts. Nepal, its a country be most of the communities arent on a road a two or or three day walk down a donkey path or yak path. Even on a good Day Communications are lacking especially in the rural areas and a majority of the nepalese people live in the rural area. My gut feel is the numbers will get much worse over time. These communities from which there is no news, i dont think thats no news is good news. My fear is no news is bad news. Youve taken long trips to nepal, long extended periods of time where youve been working on the ground with your team there. What can you tell us about the infrastructure because i keep thinking back to haiti and the reason why so much collapsed is because of the way it was built. Yes. And nepal is somewhat similar in many ways. When people are poor living on a dollar a day or two dollars a day, when they build a house, they grab whatever Building Materials they can find. Might be boulders might be timber might be a tree branch. It might be just rocks. It might be some bricks they have lying around. They may not even have cement or high quality cement. So a lot of the construction in nepal unfortunately is suboptimal. Our schools we built, we have worked to make sure they are set up for reinforced concrete, that we work with groups that help us to figure out how do you make these structures earthquake proof . When earthquakes this strong hit never know. You nefver know. The fear is there will be rebuilding that needs to be done. What about your staff, your teams on the ground . Can you reach all of them . We reached some of them. Most are accounted for. Some lost very close Family Members. Our hearts go out to those staff members. Most are accounted for. They are ready for action. Our staff is already talking about going out to the rural areas once things stabilize to figure out whats happening. We know from the posttsunami experience in invy sri lanka, there will be rebuilding done. You work with the kids. What do the kids need the most once they have hopefully their parents with them once they have enough food and shelter . What do they need to get back to the sense of somewhat normalcy . Well as you remember when we talked about the tsunami when we worked invy vysri lanka, we stayed out of the way because theres a need to get immediate aid in. After that look at rebuilding redevelopment. For children to have a sense of normalcy, what does normalcy look like . They have a school with a functioning library, welltrained teachers who are showing up to welcome them. Some of the happiest moments i experienced posttsunami invy sri lanka, seeing schools rebuilt, hope returning. Our team is planning to go out and figure out what can we do to help to rebuild schools rebuild lives . We have some investors getting behind us to say theyll be with us as we go. We dont know what the situation is going to be. Yeah. I can tell you from having made several trips to nepal, theres going to be a lot of rebuilding and reconstruction not just on homes but schools and libraries so kids will have a return to better life. John wood. So sorry for the loss that your colleagues have felt losing some of their Family Members. I know. Thank you for talking to us. A difficult time for everyone. If you want to help go to roomtoread. Org nepalearthquake. Thats johns organization. Also go here cnn. Com impact. A lot of different ways you can help right there. You can help the victims of this tragic tragic earthquake. For the loved ones there are very few things worse than not knowing whether a Family Member is alive or dead. Coming up next were going to show you how companies are helping to reach out and helping to reunite people with their loved ones in this disaster zone. Thats next. I hate cleaning the gutters. Have you touched the stuff . Its evil. And ladders. Awwwwwww they have all those warnings on them. Might as well say, youre going to die, jeff. You hired someone to clean the gutters . Not just someone. Someone from angies list. But were not members. We dont have to be to use their new snapfix feature. Angies list helped me find a highly rated Service Provider to do the work at a fair price. Come see what the new angies list can do for you. The American Dream is terrifying. American history is the history of the scary thing being the exact thing we have to do. Cross that ocean. Walk on that moon. Fly. None of this makes rational sense. It only makes american sense. Here, the hard things show us who we are. Leaving your job to start your own thing. Having a kid, when you still feel like a kid. Signing a 30year mortgage on a home. Scary sure, but no match for our colossal self belief. Were supposed to do scary. Without scary, we dont get to be brave. The people of nepal are trying to cope with the devastation of a deadly earthquake and a series of avalanches that followed. But amongst the tragedy of more than 2,500 people who have died there are some stories of survival. Some miraculous stories of men, women, and children pulled alive from the rubble. Just like this young man. Countless others still trying to find their loved ones. Laurie siegel is with me from cnn money. A lot of Tech Companies here in the United States have been instrumental in terms of the people being able to know whether their loved one is alive. At a time like this Everyone Wants to know are you okay, not okay . Everyone needs nsks. Information. There are a couple tools the tech company launched. Facebook launched safety check, a really interesting one. If youre in the area, in nepal, youll get a facebook alert. It will say, are you okay . Check in and say, im safe or not safe. Or dont check in. Knows youre there from the gio location. I went to this and i was look at it and i saw three of my friends were actually in the area and had checked in as safe. I was like i didnt know they were there. So its such a powerful tool. It shows the power of social media during times like this. Another one, google has Just Announced google their google Crisis Response team. They announced something called people finder. This is kind of this crowd sourcing tool. An emergency worker going on the ground can say i have information about someone, they can say, you know, i am looking for certain information about how do they get to that page . All you have to do, its very, very easy. Find it pretty easily on google. Type it in. Person finder. It will take you right there. Put in your name see if theres any information about them. Its a way for you to say, hey, i know that somethings happened. Another app called viber, a lot of International Folks use viber a lot just like they would use they actually announced theyre planning to announce theyll have free inbound calls to nepal but allowing quake victims to get Free International calls right now. You really see in times like this a lot of Tech Companies saying hey, we have a responsibility to help in any way we possibly can because right now, its so difficult for people on the ground to communicate, poppy. I know earlier we spoke with you know two, a young man who lost his best friend Dan Fredinburg and Dan Fredinburgs girlfriend were on last hour. Google is stepping up donating what, 1 million . Theyre donating money and asking people to match this. Look these Tech Companies, these are the guys that have the money right now. So for them to kind of take a step forward and put themselves out there and say, hey, please donate, thats always a good thing. Even you know as dans girlfriend was saying they even put up a crowd funding page and theyre asking people to fund. So you know at a time like this every cent counts and also being able to communicate in any way you can is so so important. Laurie thank you so much. Did a remarkable interview with those two individuals. Go to cnnmoney. Com. Its there on the home page now. Go to cnn. Com impact to find out other ways you can help. Thanks, i appreciate it. Rescuing the victims of this disaster has been a huge challenge. A huge challenge for the search teams on the ground. The weather there now is making it even harder. Were going to have more on the disaster and whether survives are vulnerable to more earthquakes. Next. People are switching to tmobile. Even verizon customers are jumping to americas fastest 4g lte network. From the bay area to the big apple. Ready, set, switch. To the data strong network. I am totally blind. And sometimes i struggle to sleep at night, and stay awake during the day. This is called non24. Learn more by calling 8448242424. Or visit your24info. Com. The real question that needs to be asked is what is it that we can do that is impactful . What the cloud enables is computing to empower cancer researchers. It used to take two weeks to sequence and analyze a genome; with the microsoft cloud we can analyze 100 per day. Whatever i can do to help compute a cure for cancer, thats what id like to do. Wow. Sweet new subaru, huh mitch . Yep. Youre selling the mitchmobile . Man, we had a lot of good times in this baby. Whats your dad want for it . Like a hundred and fifty grand, two hundred if they want that tape deck. Youre not going to tell your dad about the time my hamster had babies in the backseat, are you . thats just normal wear and tear, dude. vo subaru has the highest resale value of any brand. According to kelley blue book. And mitch. Love. Its what makes a subaru a subaru. 40 of streetlights in detroit at one point did not work. At the time that the bankruptcy filing was done the Public Lighting Authority had a hard time of finding a bank. Citi did not run away from the table like some other bankers did. They had the strength to help us go to the credit markets and raise the money. Its a brighter day in detroit. Kids are feeling safer while they walk to school. 40 of the lights were out but theyre not out for long. Theyre coming back. [ male announcer ] after John Huntsman was diagnosed with cancer, he founded huntsman cancer institute. To fight cancer in new and different ways like combining 300 years of family histories with Health Records to treat, predict and in many cases, prevent, cancer. With the vital understanding that cancer moves fast. And we have to move faster. To learn more or support the cause, go to huntsmancancer. Org. Anthony bourdain is back with a new episode of parts unknown. First stop 9 00 p. M. Eastern on cnn. South korea. Before that 7 00 eastern, see which episode your fellow voters chose as their favorite. That all starts tonight right here on cnn. Now to our top, back to our top story. Powerful aftershocks continuing to frighten people in nepal following the countrys worst earthquake in 80 years. Crews driging through the rubble of collapsed buildings for survivors will have to continue in really really rough weather. The forecast is calling for heavy rain and lightning. Cnn meteorologist tom seder is standing by for us. Tom, how bad is it going to get . Weatherwise, its about 4 00 in the morning and its clear right now, but last evening it came down heavy with the lightning and theres more on the way. We know from the past though poppy, sometimes if there are victims that are trapped some rain can sustain their life if they have some air. Thats where the teams from around the world now are heading in that direction to try to do what they can with search dogs and search crews. If you look at what were watching now, hundreds of thousands are out in the kathmandu valley, that means in the elements. They grabbed what they can. These tarps are not going to sustain winds that are 60 or 70 Miles Per Hour with thunderstorms in the forecast the next couple of days. Here is the satellite picture. If you notice were going to get in a little bit closer. We have fatalities in china, we have them in northern india, bangladesh as well. Most have been right here in the kathmandu valley. Notice mt. Everest, another complete story. The weather there is bad. This is going to be an unfolding tragedy as there are hundreds on the mountain there. Again, it looks like its clear. Weve got a window. At midnight hour last night once the thunderstorm ended, we were able to see the first of five flights land with aid. But the window is going itto close during the afternoon. Looks like during the morning hours, unfortunately at night when its dark thats our best chance to actually get in. Of course they have no power, no running water. 95 of kathmandu is without water. Airport as well. Limited air traffic control. They didnt want to land at night without power with a rorm. Ain storm. Thats what weve been watching. Another side of the story, weve had 50 aftershocks and they have been pretty strong. Two at a 6. 0. One at a 6. 7 which was in the last 24 hours. This girl you see here is on a thirdstory building. Theyre going in when they can, but the fear obviously is with them that more aftershocks are going to h