The Flood Is Coming

Rajendra Dawadi was inside his school near Nepal's Trishuli River with around 900 students last week when a colleague delivered an urgent warning. "My accountant came to the school and said, 'The flood is coming, the flood is coming'," the school principal told AFP. Dawadi quickly ordered an evacuation, and teachers hurried hundreds of students from classrooms to higher ground. Minutes later, he watched the school he had run for years collapse into a raging torrent.

"If the information was wrong, we would lose a day of schooling," he recalled. "But if it was true, we were going to lose our lives." Students were panicked, and one girl fainted. Bus drivers bringing in other students were asked to turn back. But the timely evacuation saved some 900 lives.

A principal without a school

The tsunami-like wall of water, ice and debris unleashed by a massive glacial and rock collapse along the Nepal-China border killed at least 1,362 people and has left more than 5,500 missing across the two countries. Five students died in the flooding outside the school, as well as a teacher and a security staff member.

"When I looked back, the school was standing there like the finest of buildings, and in five minutes, everything collapsed," Dawadi recalled. "It's also the school where I studied. There was nothing left." Santoshi Dotel, 17, was in accounting class when the evacuation order came. "We never would have thought the flood could reach such a scale," she said. It was four days later that a helicopter finally reunited her with her family.