A COUPLE have spoken of their shock after a bus careered off an icy road and crashed into their home this morning.

Jeff Knight was in bed upstairs and his wife, Cynthia, was having breakfast in a dining room at the back of the house when the accident occurred at around 7.25am.


The Arriva 86 service bus skidded on black ice at the top of a hill and crashed into the front of Mr and Mrs Knight's house at Bankwell, High Etherley, near Bishop Auckland.

Mr Knight, a retired steelworks technician, said: "So savage was the thump I thought the gas boiler had blown up.

"When I got dressed I shot outside and started to digest when had happened.

"I looked inside the bus and could see people being looked after, but I don't think there were any serious injuries."

Mrs Knight, a retired secretary, added: "At first I thought all of the snow had come off the roof, you don't expect a bus to be in the front of your house.

"I peered through the window and at first thought a van was parked next to the house, then I realised a bus was in the front of of our house.

"It was frightening really, but nobody is hurt."

It is understood that only a few passengers were on-board at the time of the accident and nobody was badly hurt, one boy is thought to have sustained minor cuts to his knees.

Police closed the road until around 10am so a recovery vehicle could remove the bus and because the house was structurally unsafe.

The road was gritted to assist the recovery but is still slippy.

The couple, both 68, will now have to wait for building experts to assess the damage to the property they have lived in for 23 years which could be extensive.

Mr Knight said: "From the inside you can hardly see anything, just a cracked window but outside the cracks go all the way up the wall. Hopefully an ornate lamppost on the corner of the house deflected some of the impact.

"We're right in line for any accidents on this bit of road and it is a miracle this is the first time I can remember anything like this happening."