Hundreds more lives could have been lost in last week's devastating floods in Nepal, if not for one school principal's split-second decision to evacuate 900 children just minutes before disaster struck.

A race against the clock

Rajendra Dawadi, principal of Tribhuvan Trishuli Secondary School in Nuwakot, received a series of warning calls around 9am local time on the day the floods hit. With only minutes to act, he made the call to evacuate the entire school, turning around buses already carrying students away from the area and telling those still on campus to run to higher ground. The floods hit roughly 10 minutes later.

What convinced him to act

Dawadi has said a parent arriving to collect their daughter, warning him a major flood was on the way, was what confirmed he needed to act immediately rather than wait. He's said that even if the flood hadn't come, the worst outcome of evacuating early would have been losing a single day of classes, a risk he was willing to take.

Reflecting on the decision afterwards, he said that delaying even slightly longer could have meant nobody, including himself and the students, would have survived to tell the story.

A student's account

16-year-old student Yunisha Amatya described the chaos of the moments before the flood hit, saying she and her classmates were still in lessons when teachers rushed in, initially unsure themselves what was happening, before instructing everyone to head home. She and her friends escaped by climbing uphill along a route behind the school, and has said they survived by a matter of seconds.

What caused the floods

The floods were triggered by a glacial collapse high in the Himalayas, after satellite imagery showed bedrock beneath a glacier gave way, registering as a magnitude 5.2 seismic event. The resulting rock and meltwater swelled rivers downstream, sweeping away buildings, bridges, and land across both Tibet and Nepal. The death toll from the disaster has now passed 900.

Save the Children is accepting donations to support relief efforts for children affected by the disaster.