How one Nepali school principal saved 1,643 children from deadly flash floods
School principal Rajendra Dawadi Photograph: (Facebook)
Nepal flash floods swept away a school, but principal Rajendra Dawadi saved 1,643 children after ordering a desperate evacuation to safety
“He said the village was gone: taken by the river. He told me to run.” The warning reached Rajendra Dawadi at 9:20 am on Wednesday. A friend alerted the principal of Tribhuvan Trishuli Secondary School in Nepal’s Trishuli Valley as a devastating flash flood tore through the region. Dawadi, a 47-year-old English teacher, had 1,643 children in and around the school’s three-storey building that morning. Within minutes, he had to make a critical decision as torrents of water, rock, ice, mud and debris surged through mountain river systems.
The disaster, triggered by a glacier collapse, killed 734 people in Nepal and 16 in Tibet. Buildings, bridges and power stations were swept away by the floodwaters. Around 2,498 people remained missing in Nepal, while another 546 were missing in Tibet’s Gyirong County, according to the latest figures.
Principal orders emergency evacuation
Initially, Dawadi believed the school was in a safe location. The concrete building stood about 60 metres above the river and was positioned at roughly the same level as the steel bridge connecting the village to the eastern bank, The Times reported. That sense of safety quickly disappeared when a parent arrived at the school with a warning that the river was rising rapidly. Dawadi immediately rang the school bell and instructed teachers to evacuate their classrooms. He contacted the school bus drivers and told all but one to turn back.
He then noticed the bus he had been unable to reach crossing the bridge. The children were soon aware that they were facing a serious threat. One girl suffered a panic attack and was taken uphill on a motorbike. The remaining students escaped on foot, with Dawadi following them, according to The Times. The children eventually reached a bodhi tree, where they took shelter as the floodwaters surged through the area and destroyed the school buildings.
Dawadi’s rapid response saved 1,643 children and all but one member of the teaching staff. Social history teacher Santos Pariyar, 32, was swept away after returning to his rented room near the river to prepare breakfast. The school’s janitor, Sultan Lama, also died after going back to close the doors.
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‘What else could I do?’
Residents have hailed Dawadi as a hero for getting the children to safety. However, the principal himself has played down the praise. "What else could I do?" he said while looking over the muddy remains of the school. The flash flood was caused by a massive section of ice and rock that broke away from Langtang Lirung peak. The material plunged approximately 1,200 metres into the steep upper gorge of the Lhende Khola river near the Tibet border. Daniel Shugar, a geomorphologist at the University of Calgary, estimated that the mass covered nearly 50 acres, an area roughly comparable to Green Park in London.
Nepal's Trishuli Valley faces another disaster
The region has experienced devastating disasters before. In April 2015, a magnitude 7.8 earthquake killed 8,962 people across South Asia. The earthquake also triggered an avalanche that buried all 300 residents of Langtang, a settlement in the flood-hit Rasuwa district. The latest disaster has once again left communities across the Himalayan region confronting widespread destruction, missing people and the loss of homes and vital infrastructure.
