At 09:10 local time, headteacher Rajendra Dawadi of Tribhuvan Trishuli Secondary School in Nuwakot received a rapid succession of four urgent calls warning of catastrophic flooding. With the school and surrounding village nestled on a river valley, the headteacher decided within ten minutes to evacuate 900 students to higher ground.
“If we didn’t make a quick decision, if it was 10 minutes later, we all—students and I—wouldn’t be alive today,” Dawadi told the BBC. He ordered buses filled with students to reverse course, and he guided classrooms to an impassable uphill route.
The sudden rise in water levels quickly engulfed a hostel building almost a kilometer from the river, resulting in the loss of at least 794 lives across the region and leaving 2,426 people missing. Students and teachers initially moved only a few hundred metres uphill before setting foot in neighbouring villages, but road closures and disrupted transport stranded many for two nights.
Yunisha Amatya recounted how she and friends scrabbled to a safe route just before the flood. “I survived by only ten seconds,” she said. “I had to climb uphill with my friends’ help; our shoes slipped but we managed to reach safer zones.”
Parents, meanwhile, struggled to find their children. Yunisha’s mother, Sabina Kumari Shrestha, spoke of her frantic attempts to contact her daughter, while her husband Yubaraj drove toward the school, fearing the worst after hearing local markets were swept away. “I thought my daughter was gone,” he recalled.
The prompt evacuation also saved the headteacher’s own residence, as the principal and Yunisha were eventually airlifted back to their village. The faculty faced challenges including impossible conditions of shelter, limited contact with authorities, and the loss of the educational infrastructure.
Dawadi said the lack of automated sirens or real‑time alert systems intensified the crisis. He emphasized that swift action prevented a catastrophe, stating: “Had I decided to close the school after the period, nothing might be left, only the bell would be ringing at 9:30.”
The flood highlights the vulnerability of rural schools in Nepal and calls for stronger early‑warning mechanisms to protect life in the face of rapid natural disasters.
