“Taking [the warning] lightly could mean the loss of hundreds of lives,” recalled Rajendra Dawadi, the principal of Tribhuvan Trishuli Secondary School
Credit: AP Photo/Rajesh Kumar Singh
NEED TO KNOW
- After receiving a warning that a flash flood was approaching the school he oversees in Nepal, Rajendra Dawadi immediately evacuated 900 students and ordered them to higher ground
- The floodwaters destroyed the school where Dawadi was once a student
- “I am extremely emotional to see the school completely swept away,” he later said
Amid the devastation of last week’s flash flooding in Nepal that has so far claimed hundreds of lives, a story of heroism and survival has emerged involving a school principal whose quick thinking saved 900 children.
Rajendra Dawadi, the principal of Tribhuvan Trishuli Secondary School in Nepal’s Nuwakot district, was teaching a class on Wednesday morning, Aug. 26, when a colleague rushed into the room and announced that a major flood was heading toward the school.
Dawadi immediately acted by ordering 900 of the school’s 1,643 total students present that morning to head for higher ground, The New York Times and the Associated Press reported.
“If we didn’t make a quick decision, if it was 10 minutes later, we all — including the students and me — wouldn’t be able to speak to you today,” Dawadi later told the BBC.
Dawadi also contacted the bus drivers to avoid coming to the school, per the AP. He later recalled to the Times that some of the students became traumatized and fainted, adding that they were safely transported on teachers’ motorbikes.
“I thought that even if the warning turned out to be wrong, the worst it would cost us was one day of study,” Dawadi also told the newspaper. “But taking it lightly could mean the loss of hundreds of lives.”
From a hillside after the evacuation, Dawadi witnessed his school, where he once attended as a student, get washed away in the floodwaters, the AP reported. Two teachers unable to make it to safety are unaccounted for.
“I am extremely emotional to see the school completely swept away,” Dawadi told the Times. “The school holds so many memories for me.”
Yunisha Amatya, 16, one of the Tribhuvan Trishuli Secondary School’s students who survived, told the BBC that she and her classmates had barely seconds to evacuate from the incoming flood through an escape route behind the school. She said she needed her friends’ help to climb uphill.
“If there was no grip in my shoes, I would have fallen. And students and other people were jostling each other to reach the safer area while escaping,” Yunisha said. “The people who chose to escape from another route are apparently swept away.”
“After I had reached the top of the hill, I received a call from my father. He was tearful and I could not speak a word then,” she later added.
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Meanwhile, the death toll from last week’s flooding affecting the Nepal-China border currently stands at 955 people while nearly 4,500 remain missing, according to authorities, CNN reported.
Among the missing are at least 85 American citizens, the U.S. State Department said on Sunday, Aug. 30, reported The Washington Post. The department said that nine Americans were evacuated and currently no U.S. deaths have been confirmed.
“The State Department is closely monitoring the situation and is deploying a disaster response advisor to the region to support response efforts,” the State Department said in a Wednesday news release. “The Department will also provide $500,000 in assistance through its global award with Catholic Relief Services, supporting emergency shelter, relief items, and water, sanitation, and hygiene assistance to flood-affected communities.”
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