For nearly 30 minutes on 22 July 2026, hail and wind tore into Semema Primary School in Tahtay Koraro Woreda, Northwestern Tigray, Ethiopia. The storm ripped the roofing off the library and laboratory block and cracked the supports beneath it. Rain poured straight down onto shelves holding nearly 10,000 textbooks, reference books and teachers' guides.
Seventeen hours to save a school's library
School was closed for the summer break, so the 1,549 students who study there were not in the building when the storm hit. But the materials they would need for the coming year were around 5,000 reference books, 394 teachers' guides and curriculum documents, and 11 wooden bookshelves.
School leaders reached the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) through an emergency communication channel set up under the programme as soon as they saw the damage. They didn't wait for instructions. Teachers arrived and began carrying books out of the flooding rooms by hand, moving them into dry storage and covering what they could with plastic sheeting before the next round of rain.
“We feared we would lose our library and thousands of valuable books,” says Medhane Berhe Kasa, the school director. “The immediate support from NRC, together with the dedication of our teachers and community members, saved resources that our students depend on every day.”
NRC's Shire Field Office in Ethiopia, coordinated with the Woreda Education Office, local authorities and school management within hours of the alert. We delivered 30 corrugated galvanised iron roofing sheets and 19 kilogrammes of roofing nails. Local skilled workers and volunteers carried out the repairs.
“Everyone understood that protecting the school meant protecting our children's future,” says Aligas Tekea, a community volunteer who joined the rebuild. “We came together immediately because education cannot wait.”
The library and storage rooms were fully rehabilitated in 17 hours.
Semema had taken part in Disaster Risk Reduction training before the storm and had an Early Warning System action plan in place, a training that shaped how quickly staff moved once the roof came off. NRC, the school administration, and local authorities have since agreed to monitor school infrastructure more closely through the rainy season and to activate rapid response measures if similar damage happens again.
The library is open. The books are dry. When the new school term begins, 1,549 students will find the shelves they left behind still standing.
This response was carried out by NRC under the Education Cannot Wait Multi-Year Resilience Programme II (ECW MYRP II), supported by Education Cannot Wait (ECW) and consortium lead Save the Children, in coordination with the Woreda Education Office, local authorities, school staff and the Semema community.
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