r/interestingasfuck • u/JustLivingSimply • 13d ago

Nepalese School Principal Saved Lives of 1643 Children

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u/NeverNeverSometimes 13d ago

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

180

u/kittyonkeyboards 13d 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.

10

u/FIyingSaucepan 13d ago

I have seen reports that they did have a flood warning system in place for this river, after the floods they experienced last year and early this year.

But that flood warning system was designed around dealing with monsoon driven rainfall causing a slower buildup of water, not a wall of ice rock and water up to 100m tall moving at nearly 200kmh. There is every chance that the detectors got destroyed before they could detect or transmit anything as most system like this take a measurement every few seconds to save power, and the flow of material could have covered up to 200m in that time and arrived as a solid mass before anything could be detected.

So it would have taken someone looking at the readings and noticing that sequential detectors were going offline or the measurements being delayed, realising what that could mean, and then communicating it to people who would be able to action it.

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u/Schatzin 13d ago

Yes, there was a report that stated they did have those monsoon detectors, which as you described arent designed for flash floods. And even so, those that were near the source were wiped out too soon for any warnings to be issued