How a Nepali teacher’s quick thinking saved 1,643 children from monster floods
NEPAL, AUG 30 : “He said the village was gone: taken by the river. He told me to run.”
The warning came at 9:20 am on Wednesday from a friend to Rajendra Dawadi, principal of Tribhuvan Trishuli Secondary School in Nepal’s Trishuli Valley. He had 1,643 children in and around the three-storey school as a devastating flash flood, triggered by a glacier collapse, tore through mountain river systems, killing 734 people in Nepal and 16 in Tibet.
Buildings, bridges and power stations were swept away as torrents of rock, ice, mud and debris surged through the region. About 2,498 people remain missing in Nepal, while another 546 are missing in Tibet’s Gyirong County, according to the latest figures.
With the floodwaters rising rapidly, Dawadi, a 47-year-old English teacher, had just minutes to act. He was responsible for the children at the school in flood-hit Nuwakot that morning, and their safety now depended on his decision.
Dawadi initially thought the school was safe. Built of concrete and about 60 metres above the river, it stood on the same level as the steel bridge linking the village to the eastern bank, The Times reported.
Then a parent rushed in with a more alarming message: the water was rising fast.
Dawadi rang the school bell and ordered teachers to evacuate the classrooms. He called the school bus drivers, telling all but one to turn back. Then he saw the bus he could not reach crossing the bridge.
By then, the children were beginning to realise they were in danger. One girl suffered a panic attack and was taken uphill on a motorbike. The others fled on foot, with Dawadi following behind, according to The Times.
The children eventually took shelter beneath a bodhi tree as the floodwaters swept away their school buildings.
Dawadi’s quick thinking saved 1,643 children and all but one member of the teaching staff. Social history teacher Santos Pariyar, 32, was washed away after returning to his rented room beside the river to cook breakfast. The school’s janitor, Sultan Lama, was also killed after returning to close the doors.
‘WHAT ELSE COULD I DO?’
Locals have called Dawadi a hero for saving the children. But he is less convinced. “What else could I do?” he said while surveying the muddy ruins where the school once stood.
The flash flood was triggered by a huge chunk of ice and rock that 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 the mass covered nearly 50 acres, roughly the size of Green Park in London.
The region has endured tragedy before. In April 2015, a magnitude 7.8 earthquake that killed 8,962 people across South Asia triggered an avalanche that buried all 300 residents of Langtang, which falls in flood-ravaged Rasuwa district.
-PTI
