A MOTHER who helped save her daughter and other children from a coach minutes before it exploded has told how she finally broke down in tears when she arrived home.

Kayleigh Wilkinson, 27, returned to Stockton with her daughter, Amelie-Jayde, aged four, and sister, Sarah Dailey, 30, last night, after surviving the drama on the National Holidays coach bound for Disneyland Paris on Friday.

Two people died in the crash which happened on the A1 near the French capital and involved a number of tankers.

"I just wanted to get home and when I did I just held my 11-month-old son, Jacob, and cried," Ms Wilkinson said.

The young mother explained that Amelie-Jayde, who was on her first ever holiday, had been scared to get on a bus again and had been "clingy" and unable to sleep alone ever since.

"She's been pointing to anything that resembles fire, like a volcano in Disneyland or whatever, and saying, 'that's the bus'. It's a bit worrying," said Ms Wilkinson, who helped organise the quick evacuation of the coach.

The family decided to go on to Disneyland instead of coming back immediately for Amelie-Jayde's sake and the little girl got to meet her heroine, Minnie Mouse. But Ms Wilkinson said: "I couldn't wait to get home, I'm just so grateful to be alive."

The crash happened while the family were asleep.

After a passenger yelled, "we need to get off, the tanker is on fire" Ms Wilkinson said: "I just went into 'mother-mode."

"I was selfish for my child but then, when Amelie was off, for all the children on the bus, we just had to get them off," she said.

"We were grabbing them and getting them off the bus. It was only a minute after the last of us got off before the bus went up. You think a bus is safe but, believe me, it is scary just how quickly it can be destroyed."

Ms Wilkinson retrieved her daughter's blanket, but they lost virtually everything else.

Along with other travellers, they then spent hours on a central reservation before being taken away from the scene, finally arriving at a hotel at 3.20am.

The following day National Holidays gave the families money to buy clothes and food and they eventually arrived at Disneyland on Sunday.

"Amelie said she wanted to live in Disneyland forever," said Ms Wilkinson, "But I couldn't wait to get home. On the train I was just staring at the time, counting the minutes back."