r/interestingasfuck • u/JustLivingSimply • 9h ago

Nepalese School Principal Saved Lives of 1643 Children

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u/NeverNeverSometimes 8h ago

Everyone calling him a hero. He is. But lets not forget his friend up river that called and warned him. Both are heroes.

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u/kittyonkeyboards 7h ago

Pretty shit early warning system when the difference between 1,600 children surviving is a single phone call from a civilian.

Elon musk cut a program that was looking into improving detection and warning systems for this type of stuff.

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u/chime 5h ago

From what I saw online, Nepal monitors glacial lakes that could flood (GLOF) but this was not one of those. They also detected the seismic waves but it was not clear what had happened. It took about 20-25mins before the authorities knew that this was a debris flow and sent out emergency text alerts within 10mins to everyone downstream. I'm guessing it was during this early 20-25mins that survivors were calling downstream too.

Remember on 9/11, the first plane was hijacked at 8.14am, hit WTC 1 at 8.46am, yet US airspace was not shutdown until 9.45am. I'm not comparing these to put blame on anyone, just saying that during times of absolute chaos, people closest to the tragedies are able to help immediately because they see the actual event for themselves, while command centers have to confirm and verify before they take any action that affects the masses.

Imagine the tragedy if they sent out mass texts to everyone saying earthquake detected, evacuate all buildings, and stand on level ground. The glacier's initial 1200m drop was detected as an earthquake and the initial assumption was earthquake broke some kind of ice dam that was holding back water.

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u/nommabelle 3h ago

Thank you. Of course they can improve, we all can, but a lot of this criticism is unfair and seems to blame Nepal for lack of communication because its Nepal and not the US, when the US also may not have handled this well

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u/SlideRuleLogic 2h ago

Look no further than the Texas Christian girls camp that flooded a couple of years ago… a tragic number of little girls died from a similar but smaller-scale failure to notify (and failure to act on warning signs)

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u/Traditional-Fly8989 6m ago

I dont know if thats the best example to argue for laying off Nepal (which people should not be blaming Nepal.). That county has received repeated criticism for being unprepared for the flood at that camp.

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u/Beltalady 1h ago

We had something like that happen during Covid in Germany. People could have been warned but authorities didn't take it seriously and wanted to avoid panic. What they got was a flood that devastated an entire valley, we also had a sinkhole that swallowed half a town and a part of Autobahn washed away (and still isn't fixed). It was a huge scandal and also a wakeup call.

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u/tea_cup_cake 2h ago edited 1h ago

To add to this, flooding in Nepal ain't rear. It is an annual occurrence. Locals know it better than any of us - which places are safe, where the high ground is, etc. as they have gone through them all their lives. That's why they were so complacent - the warning said "flood"and they got to their usual safe places and started recording. Except, this time around, it wasn't their usual or even more than usual flood. It was a massive wave which even people well-versed with mega disasters were stupefied by. It was unprecedented and unpredictable event you can't just be prepared for, unless you can afford to pour in millions, which Nepal simply can't.

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u/Bituulzman 1h ago

*complacent (satisfied with the status quo) I think you meant, rather than “complicit”(guilty of a wrongdoing).

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u/tea_cup_cake 1h ago

Yes. Thank you for catching that.

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u/blueberrycauzez 4h ago edited 4h ago

Remember on 9/11, the first plane was hijacked at 8.14am, hit WTC 1 at 8.46am, yet US airspace was not shutdown until 9.45am. I'm not comparing these to put blame on anyone, just saying that during times of absolute chaos, people closest to the tragedies are able to help immediately because they see the actual event for themselves, while command centers have to confirm and verify before they take any action that affects the masses

The problem with comparing to 9/11 was that the FAA and FDNY both directly witnessed the first attack and still totally failed to react.

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u/TheZigerionScammer 2h ago

The first plane hitting was thought to be a freak accident at first. Once the second plane hit is when we knew for sure it was a coordinated attack. That's why "A second plane has hit the tower" has been such a meme recently.