The Nuwakot headmaster rang the school bell and got 900 children uphill before the flood took the building
Rajendra Dawadi was teaching when the calls came from upstream. Minutes later Tribhuvan Trishuli Secondary School was gone, and every child who had been inside it was not.
At a glance
- Published · updated
- TopicSafety & Advisories
- Verified againstANI, via The Tribune
- Treks coveredAnnapurna Base Camp Trek — 7 Days, Everest Base Camp Trek — 14 Days
Every student who was inside Tribhuvan Trishuli Secondary School in Nuwakot on the morning of 26 August walked out of it alive, because the principal decided to empty the building on a phone call rather than wait for confirmation. About 900 children were on the premises. The campus was washed away within minutes of the last of them reaching high ground. One member of staff, teacher Santosh Parihar, is still missing.
Key facts
- Rajendra Dawadi, principal of Tribhuvan Trishuli Secondary School, Bidur, Nuwakot
- Around 900 students were in the building; school buses on their way were turned back
- The entire campus was destroyed; one teacher remains unaccounted for
- Nepal’s provisional national toll had reached 903 dead, 4,247 missing and 10,451 rescued when this was reported
We have guided out of this valley since 1998 and we know the stretch of road this school sits on. What follows is Dawadi’s own account, given to the news agency ANI. We have not embellished it, because it does not need it.
He was in a classroom when the calls came
The warning did not arrive as a siren. It arrived as telephone calls from upstream, where the settlement of Betrawati had already been hit. “At the time I got information, I was in a class,” Dawadi said. “Within minutes, all teachers gathered and took the decision to vacate the school. We rang the school bell to alert.”
That is the whole mechanism — a landline, a staff huddle and a bell. There was no automated alert on this river, which is the same gap we wrote about in the alarm that isn’t there. The margin, by his account and the reporting around it, was roughly ten minutes.
The buses were the second decision
The part of this story that gets skipped is what he did about the children who were not yet at school. “At this time, 900 students were present in the school. We also stopped school buses from reaching here,” Dawadi said. “The moment one of the school buses crossed the new bridge, the old one collapsed.”
Turning buses back is a harder call than emptying a building. It means deciding, in the same few minutes, that the road itself is the danger — and being wrong about that would have stranded hundreds of children in the open on a hillside for no reason.
What they saw when they turned round
“We all climbed uphill, and when we looked back, we saw the whole school was washed away.”
Dawadi has since said the obvious practical thing rather than anything heroic: “Education is very important, and we need to re-establish the school at a safe site. We will need the help of donations.” A safe site, in this valley, means off the flood plain and above the terrace — which is where the surviving half of Bidur already sits.
| Figure | Count |
|---|---|
| Confirmed dead | 903 |
| Missing | 4,247 |
| Rescued | 10,451 |
| Students evacuated from this one school | ~900 |
Those national numbers have moved every single day and will move again; treat them as a snapshot, not a final count. Earlier in the week the confirmed toll stood at 675. The missing column is the one to watch, and it contains both the uncontactable and the buried.
What this means for trekkers
What this means for you
The lesson here is portable and worth carrying up any Himalayan valley: in a debris flow the only move that works is up the slope, immediately, on incomplete information. Not across the valley, not to a vehicle, not after checking. Dawadi acted on a phone call he could not verify and that is precisely why it worked. If you are on a trail and the river note changes or you hear a sustained rumble that is not thunder, climb — and be willing to feel foolish about it afterwards.
How much warning did they actually have?
Roughly ten minutes, and only because someone downstream of Betrawati picked up a phone. There is no automated glacial-flood alarm on this river, which is why the warning travelled at the speed of a phone call rather than the speed of an instrument.
Were all the school’s students accounted for?
Every child who was present was evacuated. Reports citing a figure near 1,600 are describing the school’s full roll rather than the number in the building that morning; about 900 were on site. One teacher, Santosh Parihar, remains missing.
Is Nuwakot on any trekking route?
Not directly, but the Prithvi Highway and the road north to Langtang both run through this district, so it sits on the access route for Langtang, Gosaikunda and the Tamang Heritage Trail — all of which are currently suspended. Our running status is on the live updates page, and the Langtang assessment is here.
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