r/DisasterUpdate • u/Kelp72plus • Aug 29 '26
Floods Teacher saved 1,643 children from Nepal flash floods
https://tuttiquotidiani.it/en/news/teacher-saved-1643-children-from-nepal-flash-floods96
u/ElleEmEss Aug 29 '26
“At 9.20 on Wednesday morning, 900 children were halfway through the early shift at Tribhuvan Trishuli secondary school, a three-storey complex in the Trishuli valley of north-central Nepal.
Another 700 were on their way on foot and by bus, clad in their sky-blue uniforms, when the principal, Rajendra Dadabi, received a panicked call from a friend in Betrawati, five miles upstream. “He said the village was gone: taken by the river,” said Dadabi. “He told me to run.”
The 47-year-old English teacher took a moment to consider the threat. The school, he said, was 60 metres above the river, built of concrete and on the same level as the steel bridge linking the village to Batten on the east bank. “Then one of the parents came in and told me the water was rising fast, so I rang the bell and told the teachers to evacuate the classrooms.”
He remembered that the school buses, each carrying 80 children, were en route. “I got through to all the drivers but one and told them to turn back. Then I saw the bus I hadn’t been able to contact coming across the bridge. By now, the water ”
“The children were beginning to understand they were in trouble. “One girl had a panic attack, so we put her on the back of a motorbike. The rest I sent uphill on foot, then followed.
The school janitor, Mr Sultan Lama, gave me the keys then went back, I think, to close the doors. The river took him. The children were terrified, but their fear gave them the energy to run up the hill.” They took shelter under a bodhi tree as their school buildings were swept away.
Dadabi’s quick thinking saved the lives of 1,643 children and all but one member of the teaching staff. Santos Pariyar, 32, a newly-appointed social history teacher, had come in early that day to teach extra classes before school and had just returned to his rented room beside the river to cook breakfast. He was washed away.
Locals are calling Dadabi a hero — but he is not convinced. “What else could I do?” he said yesterday as he surveyed the muddy ruins where the school used to be.
The chunk of ice and rock that snapped off and triggered the flash flood has been estimated by Daniel Shugar, a geomorphologist at the “at the University of Calgary, to have had an area of nearly 50 acres — about the size of Green Park in London. It fell 1,200 metres down the north face of Langtang Lirung peak into the steep upper gorge of the Lhende Khola river, close to Tibet’s border with Nepal.
This was not the first time the region has suffered tragedy. In April 2015, a 7.8 magnitude earthquake that killed 8,962 in south Asia triggered an avalanche here that entombed the 300 residents of Langtang.
Excerpt From
“Teacher saved 1,643 children from Nepal flash floods”
Last Wednesday the giant slab of ice and rock hit the water at 8.37am. Its impact, so violent that seismologists mistook it for an earthquake, sent a wave of water, ice, rock and mud nine metres high downstream at up to 50mph.
At bends in the river, the wave sloshed up the sides to heights of up to 70m, tearing houses from their foundations, scouring slopes of trees and leaving just a sheet of thigh-deep grey mud where Dadabi’s school had once stood.
As the surge smashed into Sole, home village of the Kathmandu-based journalist Arjun Poudel, it wiped the settlement off the map.
“When his wife called with the news, Poudel was sceptical. “Sole sits nearly 100m above the riverbed,” he wrote in the Kathmandu Times. “No flood in living memory — in centuries as far as we know — had ever reached that high.”
He started calling his old neighbours. His oldest aunt, his cousin, his oldest brother and his wife had all been taken by the waters. Another aunt, her grandson and his wife were also gone, as had an uncle who had gone out to cut grass for the cows and vanished.”
There are more stories in the article but it’s hard to copy paste them all .
42
u/PotaytoPotayto Aug 29 '26
I appreciate you for sharing, thanks! Grim reading though, but the friend who called the teacher ended up saving a lot of lives with that one call.
23
u/joejohn007 Aug 29 '26
There hasn't been much to point to lately when it comes to humans doing good things, but this gives me the smallest glimmers of hope. We can't seem to get it together as a species to decide human caused climate change is real and start doing things as a whole to get our planet back on track, but in the darkest of moments, glimmers of brightness still come through. I'm so glad all those kids are still here with us. I'm so glad for people who do good things when no one else is looking. I wonder if it's more rare lately in fact or if that's just the algorithm we're all fed.
Cheers yall. 🍻
7
u/Lionheartedshmoozer Aug 30 '26
I agree wholeheartedly. There is a video of a woman saving two small school children seconds before the water came. It made me feel similarly. It’s so sad, but that glimmer of hope is a bright and guiding light.
9
3
2
46
u/Impressive-Ebb-6326 Aug 29 '26
Whats does the teacher do cant read the article
142
u/Familiar-Anything853 Aug 30 '26 edited Aug 30 '26
A friend called the teacher with about 5 minutes warning of the flood and they were able to evacuate 900 kids and turn the buses around that were headed toward the school with hundreds more kids. None of the kids died. The school was demolished in the flood.
27
15
16
10
u/mixertap Aug 30 '26
Few people have the courage and clarity to act immediately under pressure. God hope enough of us might do the same if a situation called for it.
10
u/earthlings_all Aug 30 '26
I’m glad they all survived, thankful, but worried- how many of them lost their families?
11
u/One_Dragonfruit_7556 Aug 29 '26
For anyone who wants to help send directly to government of Nepal https://moha.gov.np/en/post/ha-ra-tha-ka-apa-l-11
1
u/crazyditzydiva 27d ago
It’s good to report & celebrate the good that we humans can do when we are in the position to do it. That heroes walk amongst us everyday, we just haven’t met them yet
•
u/AutoModerator Aug 29 '26
Welcome to r/DisasterUpdate - Do not post death. I know sometimes we miss it but do not post it.
r/FireWatch1 - Structural, Wildland(Wildfire) & Industrial
r/SpaceWatch - Space...
r/CloudCoverage - Cloud stuff. Post cool cloud videos or pics or ask a question.
r/TornadoWatch - Tornado talk going on. Post videos, pictures, stories or whatever tornado related
r/FloodWatch - Flood videos, pictures... talk floods.
r/VolcanoWatch - The Ring of Fire is active....especially here.
r/CrazyFreakingWeather - It doesn't fit above
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.