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4 Americans Among Dead in Mount Everest Avalanche

As the first group of survivors from Saturday’s earthquake-triggered avalanche on Mount Everest were flown to Nepal's capital, the U.S. State Department confirmed that four Americans were among those killed in the disaster.

Filmmaker Tom Taplin, Google executive Dan Fredinburg, camp doctor Marisa Eve Girawong and avid outdoorsman Vinh Truong all died in the avalanche. Here’s more about their lives:

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Google issued a statement Saturday confirming the death of executive Dan Fredinburg who was the head of privacy for innovation lab Google[x].

Fredinburg had been scaling the mountain for the past three weeks with three other Google employees through U.K.-based tour company Jagged Globe, according to NBC News. The three were found safe, according to Google.

"Sadly, we lost one of our own in this tragedy," the statement read. "Dan Fredinburg a longtime member of the Privacy organization in Mountain View, was in Nepal with three other Googlers, hiking Mount Everest. He has passed away. The other three Googlers with him are safe and we are working to get them home quickly."

Actress Sophia Bush, who Fredinburg dated from 2013 and 2014, expressed her sadness over his passing on social media.

"Today I find myself attempting to pick up the pieces of my heart that have broken into such tiny shards, I'll likely never find them all," the actress said in a statement on Twitter and Instagram. "He was one of my favorite human beings on Earth.”

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Marisa Eve Girawong, from Edison, N.J., was described as an emergency room physician assistant. A Seattle-based mountaineering company said she was serving as a camp doctor for its team on the mountain when she was killed in the avalanche.

She was an avid rock climber and mountaineer who was pursuing an advanced degree in mountain medicine, Madison Mountaineering said in a statement. She attended school in Chicago and had successfully reached the summits of Mt. Washington and Mt. Rainier.

"Our hearts are broken," the company said in a statement.

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Tom Taplin, 61, was a Denver-born filmmaker working on a documentary about the Mount Everest base camp at the time of the avalanche, NBC affiliate KUSA reported.

His wife, Cory Freyer, told NBC News he was a photographer, filmmaker and mountaineer, and had written a book about his experiences climbing South America's tallest peak, Aconcagua, in the early 1990s.

She also said that it was on that trip that Taplin broke his arm after falling into a crevasse. However, he was able to pull himself to a place where he was reached by other mountaineers, she added. He was able to successfully climbed the mountain the next year, she said.

"It sounds trite, but he died doing what he loved doing," Cory Freyer told NBC News.

[NATL] PHOTOS: Deadly Earthquake Rocks Nepal

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Vinh Truong lived in Sunnyvale, California and had studied at the University of Chicago for a master’s in business administration.

He was killed at the Mt. Everest base camp.

Climbing Mt. Everest was a longtime dream, a friend Michelle Fennessy told The Los Angeles Times.

Fennessy, who had been following his adventure on Facebook, said she was stunned by the news of his death.

“To me, there was just no way he could have died on that mountain,” she told The Times. “He is just such survivor.”

Videos taken from a drone on Monday showed the extent of the devastation in the capital Kathmandu, caused by Saturday’s quake.
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