Photos: Sujaan Shrestha, Keshav Thapa

Properties worth around Rs30 million has been damaged in Kathmandu University School of Arts (SoA) and School of Education (SoE) when the floods triggered by incessant rainfall on Saturday afternoon entered the university premises in Hattiban, Lalitpur.

The flood water gushed through the classrooms and halls of the ground floor of the schools forcing the university to shut down its classes for a week.

According to Sagar Raj Sharma, acting dean of KU SoA, Department of Fine Arts has sustained major damages where very rare and valuable books collected over a period of one decade were stored.

According to Sharma, flood water from Hattiban farm of National Potato Research Program of Nepal Agricultural Research Council gushed through the university compound in less than 45 minutes.

"Our media lab has been completely damaged. It had cost us over Rs4.5 million to build this acoustic lab where television and radio programme were being produced," said Sharma. "We plan to resume classes by the next Sunday after we can fix the classrooms and other necessary equipments."

Few students who were present at the university premises had tried to retrieve the books, computers and other equipments placed on the ground floor.

The Department of Fine Arts had been running its programme from prefabricated structures that were built following the earthquake in 2015.

The university staffs who were present at the site during the event said the Karmanasa River swelled on Saturday morning and had been flowing into the roads. "The water brought down the wall of a school nearby and inundated the potato farm," said Padam Karki, administrative staff of KU. "Once the farm submerged, the waters began flowing inside our premises. In no time, our entire compound deluged."

The School of Arts have been running Bachelors programme in economics, community development and media studies while masters programme including development studies and human and natural resources studies are also taught in the Hattiban compound. Similarly, School of Education also runs their masters programme in sustainable development and other Mphil and Phd courses.