After school buses lay stranded for hours, Gurugram’s answer: Yet another rain plan on paper

Nearly 20 school buses lay stranded for hours, with children left hungry and exhausted and no police in sight. Gurugram’s answer to Monday’s monsoon fiasco has arrived on paper: a new school bus evacuation plan from the District Disaster Management Authority (DDMA).

The order, issued by District Magistrate-cum-Chairman Uttam Singh, IAS, under Sections 30 and 34 of the Disaster Management Act, 2005, directs the DCP (Traffic) to appoint a nodal officer within 24 hours. The officer will send waterlogging reports to schools four times a day — at 5.30 am, 10.30 am and 12.30 pm, along with a flash update within 30 minutes of any intense spell. Spare Haryana Roadways buses are to be kept on standby, traffic teams deployed at choke points during dispersal hours, and every school in the district looped into a rapid-alert broadcast list within 24 hours. The order remains in force till September 30 or until the next deluge exposes its gaps.

The trigger was Monday’s chaos, when an IMD red alert and a brutal afternoon downpour caught school transport flat-footed. Nearly 20 buses — including those of Suncity School, DPS Sushant Lok, Shikshantar School, GD Goenka Public School and Heritage Xperiential Learning School — got trapped after one broke down on a flooded stretch near Rail Vihar, Sector 47, blocking the rest. Some buses had been sent out as early as 1.30 pm as a precaution. They were still stuck past 4 pm. Children survived on biscuits.

Meetu Gupta, a Uniworld Gardens Society (Sector 47) resident, waded through waterlogged streets for 20 minutes to reach her daughter, a Class 12 student who had been stuck in a bus for nearly 90 minutes. “Students were stranded without food. My daughter was exhausted and had body pain,” Gupta said. She and another parent walked in and pulled out several children, ferrying them to safety, while many others remained trapped until almost 6 pm.

Through it all, one group drew quiet praise: the teachers who stayed on board. Several were on buses stuck for more than four hours, with some reaching home only around 8 pm — after making sure every last child got home first. Parents said these teachers kept the children calm, handed out snacks, sent constant updates and never once complained. Most have declined to go on record, citing their schools’ media policies. But to the parents who watched them hold the fort through Monday’s chaos, they were the real administration that showed up.