Teachers and students in the flooded area of Quy Chau hope for sharing
(Baonghean.vn) - After 15 years, the people of Quy Chau had to endure another historic flood. The flood came unexpectedly, and happened at night, leaving many people unable to react. After the flood, difficulties and hardships still abounded as many properties, houses, books, and school supplies were swept away by the water.
Escape the flood at night
The row of boarding rooms for students of Quy Chau High School in Block 4, Tan Lac Town is only a few dozen steps away from the school fence, if measured in a straight line. The run-down, cramped building with nearly 10 boarding rooms is home to 40 students, mainly from Chau Phong, Chau Thuan, and Dien Lam communes. The students' circumstances are very difficult, many of them are from poor households, so although the living conditions here are very cramped and lacking, the boarding rooms are always full. On average, each boarding room has 3-4 students, the monthly boarding cost ranges from 200,000 - 250,000 VND/person.
At the age of 17, for the first time, student Cam Ba Dat (class 11 C6) experienced panic when witnessing a historic flood pouring into the boarding house where he was living.
Dat remembers, it was around 5am, Dat and his three roommates Cam Ngoc Vinh, Luong Van Toan, Cam Ba Nghia were all sleeping soundly. Suddenly, they heard a loud shout "the flood is coming, run quickly". When they opened their eyes, the water was almost up to their thighs, water was everywhere, and furniture in the room started to float everywhere. Before they could think of a way to escape, in just a split second, the water started to rise rapidly. After 10 minutes, the water rose almost to the roof.
"When the water started to rise, we didn't know what to do. Then, we heard our friends in the next room shouting: Remove the tiles and get out! Indeed, that was the only solution, but we didn't know how to remove the tiles. Luckily, around us were some small knives used for daily cooking that were swept up by the water. Then, all of us joined together and removed the tiles with our hands. If there were any nails stuck, we used knives to remove them and then climbed out." - Cam Ba Dat recounted more about the difficult moments during the flood night.
At the time when the water rose above his head, Dat was also the unluckiest student because when he climbed over the roof, Dat got stuck and it took him more than 5 minutes to find a safe way out of the flood. In the same room with Dat, student Cam Ngoc Vinh also said: I live in the highlands, have never seen a flood so I never thought the flood was right behind me. I felt really panicked at that time when there was water all around and the water rose very quickly.
In this boarding house, during the flood last night, only a few students were able to run away from the flood and quickly find shelter in some houses in the area. The rest, when the water suddenly came, the only way to escape the flood was to remove the tiles and climb onto the roof. One lucky thing about this boarding house is that all the students know how to swim and swim very well. Therefore, when the flood suddenly came, although they had no place to take shelter, they believed that they could still try to swim to a safe place. In fact, although the flood came very quickly and had to remove the tiles from the roof, the students in the boarding house handled it quite quickly and climbed onto the roof easily. Even after being safely on the roof, they continued to transport 8 motorbikes of other students to the school area and successfully escaped the flood.
Student Lo Thi Giang (Lau village, Chau Phong commune) now studying in class 11 C1 added: At about 3 o'clock, we discovered that water started to enter the boarding house. At that time, the whole boarding house was still sleeping, the landlord had not woken up yet. Panicked, we only had a few belongings but as we were running, we dropped them all, some of them were soaked in rainwater and could no longer be used. Currently, my parents have known that I lost all my belongings but because the road is landslide, they have not been able to get out yet.
Need to share
Nearly two days after the flood, returning to the boarding house, everything was still in disarray. Despite great efforts to clean up, it seemed impossible because all the books, clothes and school supplies were submerged in the floodwaters and severely damaged. Inside the boarding houses, the entire back wall had been destroyed by the flood. In many boarding houses, the roofs were torn open and peeled off in large pieces.
Currently, the weather in Quy Chau has not changed for the better. The sky is cloudy, the rain is heavy and continuous for many days, making the recovery from the flood even more difficult. From Tan Lac town, up National Highway 48 to Chau Thang and Chau Hanh communes, mud and landslides are everywhere. In densely populated areas, the traces of the flood are still clearly visible on the walls of houses, in many places the flood water is up to the roof tiles. Although the recovery work is being carried out urgently, because there is no sunshine, the cleanup is still very messy.
During the recent flood, schools were also severely affected. At Chau Thang Primary School, teachers said that since the 2007 flood, this was the second time they had witnessed such a terrible natural disaster.
Sharing about this, teacher Van Thi Nga - homeroom teacher of class 2A said: This year's flood, the water rose much faster than the flood in 2007. Yesterday, from Tan Lac up here, looking at the school submerged in mud, many people could not hold back their tears. Not only were the class and school properties damaged, but more than half of the students in my class also lost their homes. I feel sorry for the students but do not know what to do.
In the pouring rain this morning, although the houses have not been completely repaired, many parents, teachers in the school and many other teachers in Quy Chau district have gathered at Chau Thang Primary School to clean up the school grounds. Currently, the cleaning work in the classrooms has been completed, the tables and chairs have been cleaned.
In the past two days, in order to reuse old assets, teachers have also tried to find and carefully clean up some teaching equipment and tools. However, many valuable assets such as televisions, computers, all school records and students' books were completely damaged after being soaked in floodwaters overnight.
Not far from Chau Thang Primary School, Chau Thang Kindergarten is also one of the schools that suffered heavy damage due to floods. Meeting the working group of the Department of Education and Training, principal Sam Thi Huyen choked up when she had to face many incidents in a short period of time. Now, the school was submerged in flood water, almost completely damaged, she felt helpless.
In an effort to salvage some valuable assets, for the past two days, teachers in the school have been trying to stay at the school and classrooms to rearrange equipment, clean up classrooms, etc. In the immediate future, if the weather is favorable, teaching at school will resume next week. However, the gaps and shortages that are currently present are unknown when they will be filled.
According to statistics of the education sectorQuy ChauIn the flood on the night of September 27 alone, hundreds of valuable assets of the entire industry with a total value of more than 20 billion VND were swept away by floodwaters.
Currently, the repair work is being carried out urgently by the whole district, but in order for schools to return to normal operations, a lot of help, cooperation and solidarity are needed.
More than ever, Quy Chau flood area, hoping for a sharing...
