Head Teacher Saves 900 Students Minutes Before Nepal Floods Devastate School
The flood that turned Nuwakot district into a sea of mud claimed at least 794 lives, but not a single student from Tribhuvan Trishuli Secondary School lived to see the twilight of that day, thanks to a headteacher’s urgent decision.
A Quick Decision
At 09:10 local time (03:25 GMT), Rajendra Dawadi received four urgent calls warning of a flood. Within moments he ordered the children to sprint to higher ground and instructed buses full of students to turn around and flee the area. “If we had waited another ten minutes we would not be speaking to you today,” he told the BBC.
The Alarming Warnings
The alarms came from four people in rapid succession: a parent who came with her daughter, another who feared the children might be lured by the rushing water, and two others who insisted that the urgency was real. “Parents don’t rush without a strong reason, so I could not waste a second,” Dawadi said. He noted that even if the flood was a false alarm, a single day’s delay would have disrupted classes.
A Student’s Narrow Escape
16‑year‑old Yunisha Amatya described her escape: “I was in class when we heard the teachers.” She and her friends scrambled uphill through the school’s narrow escape route, using a ladder left behind the building. “I could not walk fast, but my friends pulled me up,” she said. She survived by a mere 10 seconds.
Aftermath and Rescue
The school building was quickly buried under mud and debris, and a hostel 100 m from the river was engulfed. Many students and teachers moved a few hundred metres uphill before linking with a neighboring village. With roads cut off and transport disrupted, several remained stranded for two nights before rescue teams arrived.
The principal and Yunisha were eventually air‑lifted back to their home village. Meanwhile, Yunisha’s mother, Sabina Kumari Shrestha, repeatedly tried to call her daughter and husband with no answer, fearing that the flood had swept the local bazaar.
Following the crisis, Dawadi stressed the need for better warning systems, including sirens and evacuation alerts. He believes that his rapid decision “prevented a catastrophe.”
The flood’s legacy continues to affect local communities: from missing persons to the destruction of educational infrastructure. The story of the headteacher’s courage is a testimony to the importance of swift action in climate‑related emergencies.
