Nepal Flood: Principal Saves 900 Students Before School Is Swept Away

NUWAKOT, NEPAL: When Rajendra Dawadi heard that a flood was approaching, he had only minutes to act.

The school principal was inside Trishuli Bazaar Secondary School with around 900 students on August 26. Then, a colleague arrived with an urgent warning.

“My accountant came to the school and said, ‘The flood is coming, the flood is coming’,” Dawadi told AFP.

He immediately ordered an evacuation. Teachers rushed hundreds of students out of classrooms and towards higher ground.

Minutes later, Dawadi watched the school collapse into the raging Trishuli River.

“If the information was wrong, we would lose a day of schooling,” he recalled. “But if it was true, we were going to lose our lives.”

A Race Against the Flood

The students were terrified as the evacuation began.

One girl fainted from panic, Dawadi said.

Bus drivers bringing more students to the school were also told to turn back. One driver had already entered the school grounds when the evacuation order was issued.

The decision ultimately saved around 900 lives.

However, the disaster still claimed lives outside the school.

Five students died in the flooding, Dawadi said. A teacher and a security staff member also lost their lives.

The security worker had left the school shortly after Dawadi. He may have returned to close the gate, the principal said.

‘A Principal Without a School’

More than a week later, Dawadi stood beside the devastated riverbanks in Nuwakot district.

The school where he had worked for years was gone.

He described himself simply as “a principal without a school.”

A massive flow of water, ice and debris had swept through the region after a glacial and rock collapse along the Nepal-China border.

The disaster killed at least 1,362 people across Nepal and China. More than 5,500 people remain missing, according to figures cited in the report.

‘Nothing Left’

Dawadi said authorities in Trishuli Bazaar had not provided an evacuation plan.

As floodwaters rose, some residents tried to cross a bridge. Many were swept away.

Others escaped by moving towards higher ground.

“When I looked back, the school was standing there like the finest of buildings, and in five minutes, everything collapsed,” Dawadi recalled.

The loss was especially painful for him.

“It’s also the school where I studied. There was nothing left.”

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Student Reunited With Her Family

Among the students caught in the disaster was 17-year-old Santoshi Dotel.

She was attending an accounting class when the evacuation order came.

At first, Santoshi struggled to understand the scale of the danger.

She later went towards the river with a friend. They hoped to cross it and reach her family home.

Then the flood surged.

“The bridge was swept away,” she recalled. “I started to cry because I thought I would never get home.”

Her friend pulled her towards a hillside as the floodwaters roared below.

Santoshi then faced another ordeal. She did not know whether her parents had survived.

It took four days before a helicopter reunited her with her family.

“I found my mother as I stepped out of the helicopter,” she said. “She hugged me and started to cry.”

Her mother, Durga Dotel, had feared her daughter was dead.

“Seeing the river in flood, I had lost all hope that my daughter had survived,” she said.

Thousands of Children Affected

The disaster has also disrupted education across Nepal.

Figures cited by Save the Children indicate that at least 69 schools were destroyed or damaged.

As a result, nearly 19,000 children have been affected by the disruption.

For Dawadi, rebuilding the school will be another major challenge.

He said the damage was worse than the devastating earthquake that struck Nepal in 2015.

The school had also been destroyed in that earthquake. However, it was rebuilt afterwards.

This time, the situation is different.

“The school had been completely destroyed after the earthquake, but we rebuilt it,” Dawadi said.

“This time, we’ve lost the land and the building. We need a school again. But first, we need somewhere safe to build it.”

For now, Dawadi remains a principal without a school. Yet his decision to act on a warning may have saved hundreds of young lives.