A headteacher in Nepal ordered the evacuation of around 900 students just minutes before catastrophic floodwaters reached their school, allowing children and staff to escape to higher ground as the disaster swept through Nuwakot district.
Rajendra Dawadi, headteacher of Tribhuvan Trishuli Secondary School, received four separate warnings at around 9:10 a.m. that floodwaters were rapidly approaching, according to the BBC.
Dawadi immediately ordered everyone to evacuate and instructed buses carrying students towards the school to turn around. Pupils already on the premises were directed towards higher ground.
“If we didn’t make a quick decision, if it were 10 minutes later, we all, including the students and me, wouldn’t be able to speak to you today,” Dawadi told the BBC.
Several warnings convinced the headteacher that there was no time to wait for further confirmation. The arrival of a parent seeking to collect her daughter after hearing reports of a massive incoming flood reinforced the urgency of the situation.
Students scrambled uphill along narrow escape routes behind the school as the waters approached.
“We survived by just 10 seconds,” 16-year-old Yunisha Amatya told the BBC.
For parents elsewhere in the area, the sudden loss of communications created fears that their children had been swept away. Yunisha’s mother, Sabina Kumari Shrestha, repeatedly tried unsuccessfully to contact her daughter and husband.
Her father, Yubaraj Amatya, rushed towards the school but encountered widespread destruction in Trishuli Bazar.
“Trishuli Bazar was all swept by the flood, then I thought my daughter was no more,” he said. Despite seeing the floodwaters ahead, he continued searching until he could establish what had happened to his daughter.
Students and teachers from Tribhuvan Trishuli initially took refuge several hundred metres uphill before reaching a neighbouring village. Many remained stranded there for two nights after the floods severed roads and transport connections.
A similar evacuation unfolded at another school in Galchhi, where teachers reportedly told children to abandon their school bags and lunch boxes and immediately flee as floodwaters approached.
The narrow escapes have emerged amid one of the region’s worst recent disasters. Floods and mudslides along the Nepal-China border have killed at least 919 people, while 4,793 remain missing, including 853 foreign nationals, according to the latest figures released Monday.
At Tribhuvan Trishuli, however, the decision to act on early warnings before the approaching danger was visible appears to have prevented the school from becoming the scene of another mass casualty event.