As Nepal continues to reel from the devastating floods along the Nepal-China border, one principal’s quick thinking is being praised as heroic. On Wednesday, August 26th, bedrock underneath a large glacier in the Himalayas crumbled, sending rock and ice into the valley below. What followed was an unprecedented amount of flooding in the region that buried villages, killed more than a thousand people and left thousands more unaccounted for.

Those estimates would be a great deal larger had it not been for Rajendra Dawadi, a principal at Tribhuvan Trishuli Secondary School. On the morning of the floods, warnings started to roll in as children were still arriving. A fellow worker told Dawadi about the floods, then a call came into the school, then a parent came to collect their child. That was all the information Dawadi needed before making an immediate decision: evacuate the school.

He instructed teachers to lead 900 children in the school to evacuate and get to higher ground. He then reached out to school bus drivers and helped stop roughly 700 more children who were still making their way toward the school from entering the area. Then, just minutes after the school was completely evacuated, the floodwaters arrived and destroyed the school, leaving nothing behind. Dawadi, his students and staff could only look on from a nearby hillside.

In an interview with the Times of India, Dawadi said the memory of what happened will stay with them all for a long time. “The children, even some of our teachers and domestic staff, are scared of the river, it is a snaking ghost,” he said. “When they look at it, they feel afraid.”

The school itself dates back to the 1950s, but newer infrastructure was built with assistance from the Indian government and inaugurated in 2022. Dawadi said the government was instrumental in getting the newer school infrastructure built. “Previously, at the time of many disasters, [the] Indian government helped us,” he said in the same interview. “We are also hopeful this time that the Indian government will help us re-establish our school.”

That hope seems to be well founded, as the Indian government has announced that they will work to rebuild the school at some point in the future. Until the school is rebuilt, however, it’s still unclear what will happen to the children, staff and other survivors.

If you would like to help those recovering from the floods in Nepal, including the children of Tribhuvan Trishuli Secondary School, there are several ways you can make a difference. The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies is currently accepting donations as part of an emergency appeal. Other international organizations like UNICEF and World Central Kitchen are also providing emergency assistance to communities affected by the floods.

UNICEF estimates that at least 22,000 children have been affected by these floods, and those numbers will likely continue to rise as rescue and emergency crews continue to sift through the devastation and attempt to locate survivors and assess just how much damage was done to the area.