FIRE crews who saved eight children after they got stuck at the bottom of a cliff when a beck flooded have won their parents' praise.

The children, aged between five and 15, were playing in the beck in woodland near Loftus Bank, in Loftus, when it unexpectedly flooded at dusk on Sunday.

The area around it became muddy and slippery and the children could not climb out.

One of the boys, Adam Poole, used his mobile phone to call his parents for help, but they were unable to rescue the stranded children and called 999.

He said: "When we got to the place where it was flooded we noticed that it was going faster than it was supposed to be."

Firefighters from Loftus and Skelton were first on the scene shortly after 6pm and stayed with the children until crews with specialist equipment and training, from Coulby Newham fire station, arrived to rescue them. A paramedic was on standby but none of the children was hurt, although one child suffered an asthma attack during the three-hour ordeal.

Paula Garbutt, mother of ten-year-old Jamie Lancaster and his 11-year-old brother Darrell, said: "My partner and another parent went looking for the kids for an hour after they rang.

"But there's no way we could have got them out. We couldn't have saved the kids without the firefighters' help. We'd like to thank them for what they did."

A spokesman for Cleveland Fire Brigade said: "It was very dark and the children must have been very cold and frightened. It is great they had a mobile phone with them but people should not rely on them as they may not get a signal out in the countryside."

"It was such a terrifying time for all the parents," Mrs Garbutt said. "All the mums chipped in and bought a box of chocolates to say thank you. It's not very much, and I'm sure they spent a lot more than that on the rescue operation."