NUWAKOT, (Nepal): The school had vanished. Where classrooms had been filled with students that morning, there is now only mud, debris and the force of the Trishuli River in Nepal.
The three-storey building, the primary block and the entire school compound has been swept away.
Principal Rajendra Dawadi lost his own home too.
But his biggest heartbreak was not the loss of his house. It was watching the school disappear.
“I feel more pain about losing the school than losing my own house,” the 47-year-old principal said.
Yet just minutes before the flood struck, Dawadi had made a decision that helped save 1,643 students and most of the school’s teachers and staff.
A normal school morning suddenly turned frightening
It was around 9.10am on Aug 26 at Tribhuvan Trishuli Secondary School in Nuwakot.
The school was busy as usual. Classes had been running since 6 am. Around 900 students were already inside the campus, while younger children were still travelling to school.
Two school buses were also on their way to the school, which stood near the Trishuli River.
Dawadi was in his office when his phone rang.
A friend from Rasuwa was calling, and his voice sounded terrified.
“The flood has swept away the village. Run. Get out of there!” the friend warned him.
Within moments, a teacher rushed into the office with another warning.
“Sir, there is a rumour that a huge flood is coming from upstream,” the teacher said.
Then came a third warning. An anxious parent reached the school gate to collect her daughter.
“A huge flood is coming in the Trishuli. I have come to take my daughter,” she told them.
Four warnings had reached the principal in roughly three minutes.
That was enough.
Dawadi chose evacuation over caution
The school had a three-storey concrete building located around 50 metres above the river. Under normal circumstances, it appeared to offer some protection.
Dawadi decided not to take the risk.
“I did not have time to think much,” he recalled. “I thought that even if the information was wrong, we would only lose one day of classes. But if it was true, hundreds of lives could be lost.”
He ordered the emergency bell to be sounded.
Students and teachers were told to leave the campus immediately and move towards higher ground.
Then Dawadi called the school bus drivers.
His conveyed the message: ‘Do not bring the students to school. Turn around and take them somewhere safe.’
One bus had just crossed the new bridge over the Trishuli River with students aboard.
Dawadi’s call came at almost the last possible moment.
The driver turned the bus around.
Only seconds after the bus crossed the bridge and reached a safe area, the flood swept away the old bridge, which was just about 70 metres away.
The entire school was swept away
The destruction was enormous.
An 18-room, three-storey college building built with assistance from the Government of India was washed away. The primary school building was destroyed too, along with the entire school compound.
The principal could only watch.
“I wondered how the flood could possibly reach that high,” Dawadi said. “But before we knew it, the school had become a riverbed.”
The evacuation had largely succeeded. All 1,643 students survived, along with most teachers and employees.
But two members of the school community were still missing.
Two school workers were swept away
Santosh Pariyar, a 32-year-old social studies teacher, had gone to his room near the river to prepare breakfast.
School employee Sultan Lama had gone back inside the school to close a door.
Neither returned.
Both were swept away by the flood and remain missing.
Their absence has stayed with Dawadi.
“I had told everyone to run,” he said. “I don’t know how they got separated. That thought is eating me up from inside.” - The Statesman/ANN
