Rajendra Dawadi was at his school in Trishuli Bazar, Nepal, when a father rushed in, out of breath. He did not come with an official announcement. He came simply, desperately, to look for his daughter.
““A major flood is coming, I’ve come to get my daughter, I’ll take her with me,”” he told him.
No authority had issued an alert. No siren sounded that Wednesday morning. Only the voice of a father who trusted his instincts more than any protocol.
Dawadi did not hesitate. He ordered the evacuation of the nearly 900 students at the school, one by one, against the clock. Minutes later, the river water arrived with a force no one had imagined. A shelter just 100 meters from the riverbank was submerged in moments. The school building ended up buried beneath mud and debris.
Among those 900 children was 16-year-old Yunisha Amatya. Her father, Yubaraj Amatya, ran toward the school, convinced that he had lost her.
For nearly an hour, he could not reach her. Her mother, Sabina Kumari Shrestha, waited for news, unable to speak to anyone. When Yunisha finally answered the phone, there was only sobbing on the other end.
The flood left at least 2.426 people missing in Nepal.
But at that school, thanks to a father who did not wait for permission to act, there was not a single name to add to that list.