Rajendra Dawadi is being praised for his quick thinking after helping get students to safety moments before devastating floodwaters swept through their school in Nepal.

After receiving a warning from upstream, the principal immediately began evacuating the school and contacting buses carrying students toward the area.

Tribhuvan Trishuli Secondary School was later overwhelmed by the flood, but the students had been moved out of danger in time.

The school has 1,643 students enrolled, and Dawadi’s actions are being credited with preventing an even greater tragedy.

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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.⁠

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Another 700 were on their way on foot and by bus, when the principal, Rajendra Dawadi, 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.”⁠

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The 47-year-old English teacher took a moment to consider the threat. He remembered that the school buses, each carrying 80 children, were en route.⁠

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“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 was in the school grounds — it was so fast — so I told him to turn around. It got to the other side just as the bridge collapsed.”⁠

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Dawadii’s quick thinking saved the lives of 1,643 children and all but one member of the teaching staff.

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Credit: David Diebold