Yunisha Amatya is 16 years old and was in class in Trishuli Bazar, Nepal, when the water began to rise without warning.
There were no sirens or time to think. She and her friends ran toward an escape route behind the school; Yunisha could not move quickly, so her classmates helped her up the slope while the flood devoured the place where they had been sitting just seconds earlier. “My friends and I survived by just 10 seconds”, she told the BBC.
Meanwhile, her mother, Sabina Kumari Shrestha, dialed her number again and again without receiving an answer. Her father, Yubaraj Amatya, ran until he found Trishuli Bazar completely underwater and spent nearly an hour convinced that he had lost his daughter. What saved hundreds of students that day was the quick response of principal Rajendra Dawadi, who evacuated 900 children minutes before the classrooms were destroyed. 🙏