Last Wednesday, a devastating flood at the border area between Nepal and Tibet has claimed the lives of nearly 800 people and left thousands missing. In a crucial moment before the deadly torrent swept through a small town, a principal successfully evacuated 900 students from the school.
Rajendra Dawadi, the principal of Tribhuvan Trishuli School in Nuwakot, made the decision to cancel classes and command the students to move to higher ground upon receiving warnings about the impending flood and its scale.
Dawadi, with a total of 1600 students at the school, mentioned that he received four alerts from different sources, including one from the upstream town of Betrawati, all within a few minutes.
These alerts prompted him to take immediate action.
“A parent ran to tell me, ‘The big flood is coming, I’m here to pick up my daughter, I want to take her away,'” Dawadi told the BBC. “Parents don’t rush for no reason, so I was sure I had to evacuate the children as quickly as possible,” he said. “I decided not to delay any longer. Even if the flood didn’t come, it would’ve only meant a missed day of classes.”
Dawadi witnessed a dormitory building approximately 100 meters from the river being engulfed by the raging flood during the evacuation process. “If we were 10 minutes late in making the decision, no one, including myself, would be sitting here for an interview today,” he said. “I am proud to have saved so many lives,” Dawadi added.
A student expressed that Dawadi’s decision saved their lives at the last moment. Yunisha, a 16-year-old student, told reporters, “My friends and I narrowly escaped in the final 10 seconds.” She described the scene of children fleeing along the muddy path as the flood and debris submerged the town. “In the blink of an eye, the market was washed away before my eyes,” she said, sharing that she reunited with her family three days later.
Local resident Surinder in Trishuli mentioned that the flood “wiped out an entire building.” “There was a three-story school adjacent to the temple here, with a market nearby,” Surinder said. “When the flood struck, that teacher evacuated all the students, saving their lives.”
According to the charity organization Save the Children, at least 69 schools were destroyed or damaged in the flood disaster, affecting nearly 19,000 students. In one of the hardest-hit regions, Dhading, a group of students luckily survived as they had left the classroom to have lunch just in time.
Some students in the region also managed to escape because their teachers promptly instructed them to evacuate the classrooms before the floodwaters arrived. A student’s mother told the Associated Press that the teachers warned the students, “There’s a flood, leave your school bags and lunch boxes (quickly and go).” It was thanks to the teachers’ urgency that they survived.
So far, over 3,700 people have been rescued in Nepal. As of Sunday (August 30th), there are still 2,502 individuals missing (including 592 foreigners). Reportedly, the latest death toll stands at 781.
The United States Geological Survey pointed out that the disaster that struck the Nepal-Tibet border area of the Himalayas last Wednesday morning was triggered by a glacier collapse. The collapse resulted in a massive influx of water and debris cascading downstream like a high wall.