Rajendra Dawadi has downplayed his role in evacuating more than 900 students moments before flash floods obliterated his school in Nepal’s Trishuli Valley.
Dawadi, the principal of Tribhuvan Trishuli Secondary School, was inside his classroom last week when a colleague burst in with news that floodwaters were tearing through the region. A teacher then received a phone warning, and a parent arrived to collect her child. Though the danger remained unconfirmed, Dawadi rang the school bell and ordered students and staff toward higher ground.
“I immediately decided to stop … school” and get the children out, he said.
As Dawadi followed the evacuees to a nearby hill, the waters rose behind him. From that hillside refuge, he watched the institution where he had once studied and spent years teaching vanish beneath a torrent of water, mud, boulders and debris. Two staff members failed to escape and remain missing.
The flood, triggered by a glacial collapse in the Himalayas, killed more than 900 people across Nepal and China, with over 4,700 still missing. At least 69 schools in northern Nepal were completely destroyed, putting nearly 19,000 students at risk, according to Save the Children.
Dawadi’s school had 1,643 students enrolled. At least 900 were on campus that morning, with others still en route. He ordered those present to leave and called bus drivers to halt their runs. One bus packed with students had already arrived when Dawadi directed the driver to turn back. That bus crossed a newly constructed bridge; moments later, the old bridge beside it collapsed.
Student Suvina Tamang, 14, said the building was swept away shortly after evacuation. “I will thank him when I see him” for saving my life, she said.
Days later, Dawadi returned to where his school once stood. Parents embraced him there, weeping with gratitude. “Their parents hugged me, they cried with me,” he said. “They were emotional.”
Yet Dawadi resists the hero label. For him, rescuing his students was simply his responsibility. Now he says those children will need psychological counseling before lessons can resume, even at a temporary location.
“I have no words. I got education from that school. And I gave education at that school,” he said.
His appeal to the Nepalese government is to rebuild the schools and return children to classes.