Devastating Landslide Buries School, Disrupts Teaching and Learning in Parbat

Hamrakura
Published 2023 Aug 16 Wednesday

Parbat: A region grappling with relentless rainfall, has seen its educational landscape shaken as school structures are buried beneath cascades of earth and debris due to landslides. Thapathana Secondary School in Falebas Municipality-2, the epicenter of this calamity, finds itself profoundly affected. Two of its buildings were enveloped by a landslide that descended from an elevation of about 50 meters above the school.

Bishnu Prasad Sharma, the school's headmaster, conveyed that despite the loss of three rooms to the landslide, educational endeavors continued in the eight remaining classrooms. However, the disaster's impact cannot be ignored. The school had already suffered damage from a previous landslide on July 1, and the situation exacerbated with another landslide striking the same area on August 7, 2023. As time passes, the landslide inches closer, gradually encroaching upon the school's premises. Sharma expressed his concern, stating, "Maintaining students' safety in all eight rooms has become a precarious challenge."

The school accommodates a diverse range of students, from primary to grade eight, amounting to a student body of 240. The looming threat of landslides remains a constant worry. Sharma remarked, "The risk of another landslide is ever-present, posing a peril to both the school's infrastructure and its occupants." Consequently, the school has been forced to group students from grades 2 to 3 together in order to minimize risk.

Santosh Rijal, a dedicated teacher at Thapathana Secondary School, noted that the deterioration of the Naudanda-Karkineta-Falebas-Jaimuni road's edge was instrumental in causing damage to two to three classrooms. Notably, Thapathana holds the distinction of being the school with the highest enrollment within Falebas Municipality.

As the community grapples with the aftermath of these landslides, the educational institution's fate hangs in the balance. With structural damage and the constant specter of further landslides, the path to resuming normalcy remains uncertain, casting a shadow over the pursuit of education in Parbat.



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