It's laughable - several officers were detailed to aid pupils forced to walk home, cross Rayrigg Road safely - yet the traffic there was gridlocked!!
I telephoned Radio Cumbria an hour before the children were released from School to ask that parents be warned NOT to set off while the road was blocked, but they told me the info. could only come from the school!
I tried the school, which was engaged, so I rang Kendal Police - only to get a lady who despite me telling her the school was alongside the accident, had to ask three times where the school was and what it was called!
She also said only a senior officer could ask that parents be requested to refrain from setting off to collect their children! She then suggested it might even have been cleared up by the time the pupils were released!!
Because many parents from Windermere had tried to circumvent the queues they found by going via Bowness and Rayrigg Road, they found themselves trapped in traffic while their children had to walk home - in a few cases to empty homes
The Holbeck Ghyll road was gridlocked with cars meeting each other on a narrow lane - so the only route available from Ambleside would be via Hawkshead!
My final concern was that pupils who only recently had lost one of their number in the accident on Bannerigg - involving a silver Peugeot 206, had been forced to walk home past yet another fatal scene, also involving a 206. It
was upsetting to some pupils apparently, and cannot have been convenient to the officers trying to survey the scene, and free the woman apparently trapped in her car either. Yet an hour before, I had pointed out that an alternative route around Old Hall Road would prevent pupils from having to witness the scene at such close hand - but the unco-operative lady answering the call to Kendal had dismissed my concerns and information.
I was lucky in that I had a contact in the village to check the circumstances with, and I could contact my son via his mobile phone, and tell him he would have to walk home, but I could only contact two other parents whose details I knew, to keep them informed. I was disapointed in the attitude of the female who answered the call to Kendal, and her lack of knowledge of the area. That in itself would be excusable if she were to transfer my call to somebody who knew more - but she did not.