Head Teacher Evacuates 900 Pupils a Minute Before Nepal Floods

At 9:10am local time Rajendra Dawadi received four urgent phone calls warning of a looming catastrophe. He decided immediately to evacuate students from the school, warning them to move to higher ground and sending buses full of children back towards their homes.

The flood hit the Nuwakot district a mere ten minutes later, flooding the school campus and converting the nearby hostel into a drowning hazard. Dawadi told the BBC that if he had hesitated, the school would not have spoken to anyone today.

Students and teachers scrambled uphill and eventually reached safer ground in a neighboring village. Some were stranded for two nights before rescue teams arrived. The incident clarified the urgency of faster warning systems and siren alerts.

One student, Yunisha Amatya, 16, described the narrow escape: she and friends ran up a narrow ladder behind the school as the flood realigned the bazar in front of them. Yunisha says she survived by mere seconds.

The flood has claimed at least 794 lives and left 2,426 people missing. The tragedy also involved the destruction of the school’s campus and the loss of many community members.

Still, the headteacher credits his quick decision-making for preventing a larger disaster and stresses the need for better community evacuation protocols.