Head teacher evacuated 900 children minutes before Nepal floods hit school

Nine hundred children walked out of a Nepali school ten minutes before the river swallowed it

Constantvpn.com – When the Trishuli River surged through Nuwakot district on Wednesday, it carried away homes, markets, and infrastructure across wide stretches of central Nepal. At least 794 people have been confirmed dead, and more than 2,426 remain missing as search teams work through mud and wreckage. Yet in one narrow window of time, a single decision by a school principal pulled 900 students out of a building that would soon be buried under debris.

Rajendra Dawadi, head of Tribhuvan Trishuli Secondary School, made that decision at 09:10 local time (03:25 GMT) on the morning of the disaster. Within a matter of minutes, four separate phone calls reached him, each warning that a catastrophic flood was imminent. He ordered every child to run uphill and directed buses already loaded with students to reverse course and flee the valley floor.

“If we didn’t make a quick decision, if it was 10 minutes later, we all – including the students and me – wouldn’t be able to speak to you today.”

Dawadi explained that the urgency of the calls themselves confirmed the threat. One parent appeared at the school gate demanding to collect her daughter, a behaviour he read as confirmation that something extraordinary was unfolding.

“A parent came and told me that ‘a big flood was coming, I am here to take my daughter, I will take her.’ Parents don’t rush without a strong reason, so it was confirmed that I shouldn’t waste a second to evacuate the children.”

“I decided I shouldn’t delay any more. Even if the flood was not coming, it was just a matter of a single day’s classes. I feel proud that we saved so many lives.”

The geography that made the choice urgent

Nuwakot sits in a narrow valley where the Trishuli River, a major tributary of the Bagmati, can rise with terrifying speed after heavy rainfall upstream in the Himalayan foothills. The school’s hostel building stood roughly 100 metres (328 feet) from the riverbank. Dawadi described how that structure was engulfed almost instantaneously once the waters arrived, leaving no time for even a second evacuation wave. The main school building itself was subsequently buried under mud and debris.

Nepal’s monsoon season, typically running from June through September, regularly produces flash-flood events of this magnitude. The country’s steep topography, combined with decades of deforestation and rapid urbanisation along river corridors, means that communities in the Terai plains and mid-hills face recurring, often fatal, inundation. The scale of this particular event — with thousands missing and hundreds confirmed dead — underscores how quickly a single afternoon of heavy rain upstream can become a valley-wide catastrophe downstream.

A sixteen-year-old’s ten-second margin

For the students inside the classrooms, the evacuation unfolded in confusion and fear. Yunisha Amatya, 16, was sitting in a maths lesson when teachers began gathering in one area, initially uncertain of what was happening. After roughly five minutes, staff informed pupils of the flood and instructed them to leave.

“I along with my friends survived by just 10 seconds only,” she recalled. “Just before the flood came, we were in the class studying. Teachers had gathered in one place and initially had no idea what had happened. After five minutes teachers came and informed us about the flood and asked us to go home.”

One student fainted upon hearing the news. Many pupils, still processing the shock, paused to wait for classmates in other rooms. Yunisha and her friends then scrambled uphill through a narrow escape route behind the school, climbing a ladder and pushing through crowds of panicked students and adults.

“I could not walk fast, and my friends helped me to climb uphill. We tried our best to be in the safer zones then. We escaped through a narrow ladder from backside of the school. Within no time, the bazaar was swept away in front of my eyes.”

“If there was no grip in my shoes I would have fallen and students and other people were jostling each other to reach the safer area while escaping. The people who choose to escape from another route are apparently swept away.”

The group initially moved a few hundred metres uphill before continuing to a neighbouring village. With roads severed and transport networks paralysed, many evacuees were stranded for two nights before rescue teams could reach them. Dawadi and Yunisha, both of whom live on the opposite bank of the Trishuli, were eventually airlifted back to their home village.

The hour a father could not reach his daughter

While students climbed to safety, parents across Nuwakot were dialling phones into silence. Yunisha’s mother, Sabina Kumari Shrestha, repeatedly attempted to call both her daughter and her husband, reaching neither. Her husband, Yubaraj Amatya, reacted immediately.

“Soon after the flood news spread, I tried my daughter’s number, but she was not reachable, then I was afraid. Within a few minutes I rushed toward my daughter’s school and Trishuli Bazar was all swept by the flood, then I thought my daughter was no more. I was so horrified, stopped my scooter, there was flooding but I could not think of returning without my daughter.”

For nearly an hour he kept dialling, unable to confirm whether his daughter was alive. When the call finally connected and Yunisha answered, the relief was overwhelming.

“Finally, my daughter received my call and I couldn’t stop myself, broke out… two relatives that were with me also cried and hugged me.”

Yunisha, still visibly shaken, described the moment from her side of the line.

“After I had reached the top of the hill, I received a call from my father. He was tearful and I could not speak a word then.”

Back in their village, the family waited anxiously for hours before rescue operations allowed them to reunite. Their story, like that of the hundreds of other families separated by the flood, illustrates how quickly a routine school morning in a Nepali valley can become a life-or-death scramble — and how a single principal’s willingness to act within minutes can stand between a classroom full of children and a river that does not wait.