Last-minute flood warning saved over 900 students in Nepal, school headmaster says
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Damaged properties on Aug 31 along the Trishuli River in Nepal, where the Tribhuvan Trishuli Secondary School once stood.
PHOTO: REUTERS
- Headmaster Rajendra Dawadi received a last-minute flood warning that helped evacuate over 900 students and 16 staff members from Tribhuvan Trishuli Secondary School in Nepal.
- The school was destroyed by the flood, which killed over 900 people and left thousands missing, but the early warning and quick evacuation saved many lives.
- Dawadi urges authorities to rebuild the school in a safer location, as the disaster deeply affected the community and some staff members remain missing.
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BIDUR, Nepal – Headmaster Rajendra Dawadi was in his school in Nepal’s Bidur on Aug 26 when his accountant entered, shouting, “The flood is coming, the flood is coming”, giving an early warning that helped save the lives of 900 students and 16 faculty members.
As teachers at the Tribhuvan Trishuli Secondary School began receiving panicked phone calls from relatives and friends, a roaring wave of mud water was already making its way through the valley upstream, flattening entire towns.
The accountant had received a call from a relative in Rasuwa, which was hit first, giving just 14 minutes to evacuate in a decision that saved the students’ and teachers’ lives – a rare glimmer of hope in a natural disaster that has killed more than 900 people, with thousands missing.
Rebuilt in the wake of Nepal’s devastating 2015 earthquake that killed around 9,000 people, the school stood on a peninsula of sorts, squeezed in between the Trishuli River and a hydropower canal.
“We immediately said: Stop the class, ring the bell,” Dawadi told Reuters in an interview.
The school no longer exists and its former location sits inside the riverbed.
A panicked escape
Over 900 of the school’s roughly 1,600 students were on campus at the time of the first warning.
Dawadi said he instructed buses that were headed to the school with more students to head to safer ground, and quickly began to evacuate the premises. As chaos spread, at least one student fainted, Dawadi said.
Parents, teachers, and students arrived with motorbikes to pick up their children. Others were taken to safety in buses or ran to higher ground.
Headmaster Rajendra Dawadi had less than 15 minutes to help students and teachers evacuate Tribhuvan Trishuli Secondary School, which stood on the banks of the Trishuli River in Bidur, Nepal.
PHOTO: REUTERS
By the time the last bus crossed a nearby bridge across the river an estimated 14 minutes later, a wall of water was making its way through the town of 60,000.
As “our bus crossed the new bridge, the old bridge collapsed”, Dawadi said.
Headmaster Dawadi was once a student in this school, long before he became its headmaster, and he now wants the authorities to rebuild the school in a safe location as soon as possible.
Tribhuvan Trishuli Secondary School was swept away on Aug 26 when a wave of mud water surged through the valley upstream, flattening entire towns.
PHOTO: REUTERS
‘Only God can do this’
Headmaster Dawadi is being credited by many parents for saving their children. “He was like a God. He gave life to my daughter and to many other children. Only God can do this,” said Man Maya Tamang, 50, who initially thought she had lost her daughter Sushmita.
For many others in Bidur, the warnings came too late. At least one school employee and the school accountant’s mother are missing, Dawadi said.
After warning the school, the accountant had rushed back to his parents’ house to save them. He managed to take his father uphill, Dawadi said, but when he returned for his mother, the house had been washed away. REUTERS
