‘The flood is coming’: How a Nepal principal saved 900 students

“The flood is coming, the flood is coming,” an accountant told principal Rajendra Dawadi at a school near Nepal’s Trishuli River. Dawadi immediately ordered about 900 students to evacuate.

Teachers rushed the students from their classrooms to higher ground. Minutes later, Dawadi watched Trishuli Bazaar Secondary School, which he had run for years and once attended himself, collapse into the torrent.

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The flood is coming, the flood is coming.

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

The warning saved the students inside the school, although five students died in flooding outside the building, along with a teacher and a security staff member, Dawadi said. Bus drivers bringing additional students were told to turn back, including one who had already entered the school grounds.

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

The disaster followed a massive glacial and rock collapse along the Nepal-China border, unleashing a tsunami-like wall of water, ice and debris. The article said at least 1,362 people died and more than 5,500 remained missing across the two countries.

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a principal without a school

Dawadi said local authorities had not provided an evacuation plan. Residents who tried to cross a bridge were swept away, while others fled to higher ground. Student Santoshi Dotel said the bridge disappeared as she tried to reach her family. She was reunited with her parents by helicopter four days later.

Now standing above the damaged riverbanks, Dawadi describes himself as “a principal without a school”.

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We never would have thought the flood could reach such a scale.