I saw our ‘Eiffel Tower’ come crashing down, says survivor

Tapan Singh was standing in a queue to buy a bus ticket when all of a sudden the ground beneath his feet started shaking. He froze with shock as he saw the 183-year-old iconic Dharahara tower come crashing down, burying scores of people.

There is rubble, white plaster and red bricks all around where the 50.5-metre tall tower once stood. One cannot stay there for more than a minute because of the nauseating stench of rotting bodies. “I saw the Dharahara tower shaking, and then it crashed down with a deafening sound. I could not hear anything for a minute, could not do anything,” Tapan Singh said.

“It was our ‘Eiffel Tower’, it was the pride of Kathmandu,” he said. 

A 7.9-magnitude earthquake on April 25 caused widespread devastation across the Himalayan nation, killing over 4,300 people and injuring more than 7,500.

According to the Nepal Police headquarters, around 250 people were killed when the tower collapsed on April 25 in the massive earthquake.

The nine-storey, over 50-metre-tall tower was built in 1832 by Nepal’s first prime minister Bhimsen Thapa. It was built as a military watch tower but became one of Kathmandu’s key landmarks. Visitors could climb to the top to get a panoramic view of the capital.