When Rajendra Dawadi realised the floodwaters were moving towards his school, there was no time for a long evacuation plan. The 47-year-old principal of Tribhuvan Trishuli Secondary School in Nepal’s Trishuli Valley rang the school bell, ordered teachers to get the children out and began making calls as fast as he could. Within minutes, 1,643 students were being moved away from the three-storey building.
“He said the village was gone: taken by the river. He told me to run.” Dawadi had received that warning from a friend at 9:20 am on Wednesday, The Times reported. What followed was a desperate race to get the children to safety as a devastating flash flood, triggered by a glacier collapse, tore through mountain river systems, killing more than 750 people in Nepal and 16 in Tibet. About 2,498 people remained missing in Nepal, while another 546 were missing in Tibet’s Gyirong County.
Principal orders evacuation as flood hits
Dawadi had initially believed the school was safe. The concrete structure stood about 60 metres above the river and at roughly the same level as the steel bridge connecting the village to the eastern bank.
That changed when a parent arrived with a warning that the water was rising rapidly.
Dawadi immediately rang the school bell and told teachers to evacuate the classrooms. He also contacted the school bus drivers, asking all but one to turn back. He then saw the bus he could not reach crossing the bridge.
By then, the students were beginning to understand what was happening. One girl suffered a panic attack and was taken uphill on a motorbike, while the others ran on foot, with Dawadi following behind.
The children eventually found shelter beneath a bodhi tree as torrents swept through the area and carried away the school buildings.
1,643 children rescued as school is swept away
Dawadi’s quick response helped get all 1,643 children to safety, along with all but one member of the teaching staff.
Social history teacher Santos Pariyar, 32, was washed away after going back to his rented room beside the river to cook breakfast. The school’s janitor, Sultan Lama, was also killed after returning to shut the doors.
Local residents have since described Dawadi as a hero, but he does not seem particularly convinced by that label.
“What else could I do?” he said while looking over the muddy remains of the school.
Glacier collapse triggers devastating flood
The flash flood was triggered when a huge mass of ice and rock broke away from Langtang Lirung peak and plunged about 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, roughly the size of Green Park in London.
The destruction has also revived memories of another catastrophe in the region. In April 2015, a magnitude 7.8 earthquake killed 8,962 people across South Asia and triggered an avalanche that buried all 300 residents of Langtang, located in the flood-ravaged Rasuwa district.
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