A STAGECOACH bus was involved in a minor collision with an ambulance as it waited to respond to emergencies in yesterday's ice 'carnage'.

A front line ambulance was involved in the collision in Newton Road just after noon.

A spokesman for the ambulance service in Torquay said: "It was waiting for instructions when it was involved in a very minor incident with a bus.

"There was minor damage to a rear light cluster and the vehicle was operational again within 30 minutes."

He said there were no injuries to any of the crew or anyone on the bus and no emergency vehicles were required.

It is understood the window on the bus smashed but none of the passengers were hurt.

Keith Sharp was onboard the number 12 when the accident happened near to Edginswell Business Park.

He said: "Fortunately there was only six people on the bus and none of them was badly hurt. I don't think there was anybody in the ambulance but when you stepped on to the pavements it was extremely slippery. It was very dangerous."

In the South Hams the A38 was closed at Ashburton after at least five cars were involved in a pile-up.

In Buckfastleigh, roads were also grid-locked after cars were involved in a similar shunt.

One driver, who did not wish to be named, was stuck on the A38 for an hour after the eastbound carriageway was shut.

He said it took him three hours to get from the South Hams to Torquay as multiple accidents led police to close the road.

"We ended up sitting at a standstill near the Marley Head junction," he said, adding: "It went on for so long that people were getting out of their cars and milling around in the middle of the road.

"Everyone had to pull right up against the side of the road when an ambulance and a police incident vehicle came through."

He added: "We got going after an hour, and saw why we had been sitting for so long because there were at least half-a-dozen cars smashed up on the roadside. It was complete carnage."

He said traffic was also moving slowly through the Pen Inn roundabout and through Kingskerswell, and that he would have stayed at home had he realised it would take so long.

"To be honest, a few hours at work probably wasn't worth the risk of going out in such awful conditions — but it seemed fine when I left home."

Richard Ellis, 37, who runs Ellis Engineering on the Totnes Industrial Estate, was unable to get to work at the new Langage Power Station in Plymouth.

His staff were also unable to get to work, and when he tried to drive his blue Ford Transit van he slid 300 yards down the hill outside his Christina Park home before colliding with another van, scraping its side and knocking its wing mirror off.

"I didn't know what to do. There was nothing I could do to stop the van. As I got closer to the other van I started to panic," he said.

Alan Shuttleworth, 46, from Elmhirst Drive, Totnes, was bagging up the last of the grit from a bin to spread on his road after his wife had an early morning accident in her Rover 45 as she tried to get to work at Morrisons in Kingsbridge.

He explained she couldn't stop at the junction with Christina Park and slid on and hit the fence opposite going backwards down the hill. She bounced off the fence and hit local retained firefighter Paul Chambers's car.

"It took us 25 minutes this morning to get from the bottom of Christina Park, back to the house which is only 75 yards away. I was on my hands and knees."