Passengers rescued as bus becomes stuck in flood water in Scotland

Passengers have been rescued from a bus after it became stuck in flood water as Storm Frank battered Scotland.

Emergency services and a Royal Navy helicopter were called to the scene near Dailly cemetery in South Ayrshire at about 1.35pm on Wednesday.

Police Scotland said 10 people have been uplifted from the bus and taken to Girvan Hospital as efforts were ongoing to remove all passengers safely from the vehicle.

Aberdeenshire, Ayrshire and Dumfries and Galloway bore the brunt of the severe weather which caused disruption to road, rail and ferry services right across the country.

The storm has also left thousands of homes without power and severe floods in its wake.

The Scottish Environment Protection Agency has issued a “severe flooding – danger to life” warning for Whitesands in Dumfries and Galloway and for the River Tweed in Peebles in the Borders.

The Scottish government’s resilience committee has met to assess the response to what environment minister Aileen McLeod described as a “very serious situation”.

Meanwhile, the UK Environment Agency said Britain had faced an extraordinary period of severe weather and flooding in December, with consultants PwC warning that the latest deluge from Storm Frank could take total losses above £3 billion (€4.1 billion). The chairman of the agency, Sir Philip Dilley, returned from a Christmas holiday to Barbados amid criticism at the timing of his break during some of the worst storms in decades.

In the North Yorkshire town of Tadcaster late on Tuesday, part of an 18th-century stone bridge crumbled into the racing river, while part of Birnbeck Pier, in Weston-super-Mare, a unique Victorian pier, collapsed in to the Bristol Channel. About 6,700 properties were flooded in northern England in the past week as river levels reached all time highs, while three severe flood warnings remain in place, meaning there is a danger to life. – PA