A school bus driver drove past two road closed signs before stranding his vehicle in floodwater with 23 children onboard, a court has heard.
The pupils, who were heading for Easingwold school in North Yorkshire, were rescued by firefighters after the school bus they were in was caught in the flooding caused by last winter’s Storm Frank, a jury at York crown court was told.
The incident happened near the village of Newton-on-Ouse on 5 January following what judge Paul Batty QC described as “floods of biblical proportions” in the York area.
Firefighters were called by children on the bus when it tilted into a verge and began to fill with water. Flood rescue officers smashed a back window to rescue the children, who were lifted from the partially submerged Stephensons school bus on to another vehicle by North Yorkshire fire and rescue workers.
After the children were rescued, the single-decker bus lay abandoned, with the front of the vehicle submerged in the waist-high water. The pupils were given hot food, drinks and dry clothes and counselling was offered.
Bus driver Graham Jones, 43, went on trial on Thursday accused of dangerous driving. Graham O’Sullivan, prosecuting, told the jury that Jones denies that charge but admits that he drove carelessly.
O’Sullivan said Jones drove his bus along Tollerton Lane from Newton-on-Ouse on the first day back after the Christmas break.
He said this was not the normal bus route but the driver had been told to pick up a child at an isolated farmhouse because a closed bridge meant the normal bus could not reach him.
The prosecutor said Jones drove through one stretch of floodwater before losing control of the bus in a second section.
He told the jury: “Mr Jones had driven through two road closed signs.”
Jones, of Linton Woods Lane, Linton-on-Ouse, denies one charge of dangerous driving.
The village of Newton-on-Ouse, which is about 10 miles north-west of York city centre, was one of the North Yorkshire areas worst hit by Storm Frank, which caused the river Ouse to rise dramatically.
Storm Frank was the sixth named storm of last winter and brought gales to western parts of the UK, with gusts as high as 85 mph in north-west Scotland. The storm resulted in yet more flooding in parts of the north of England.
The trial continues.
