Timberline High School's principal, Amos Wamba, ignored news media and weathermen's warnings of a severe storm and predicted dangerous flooding. His decision placed thirty-four hundred students in danger, but Wamba had personal reasons for not closing his school.

Amos Wamba was not bothered that he was disliked in the community and felt that everyone was 'out to get him'. He sensed the school superintendent's personal growing hostility. Wamba smiled at the man's predicament; after all, the superintendent was the man that had hired him for the principal's position. Wamba feared more the wrath of his belligerent wife and his failed home life.

Wamba's failure to close school has disastrous results when a bus with 24 students is swept into the flooded and raging waters of Marsden Creek. The only hope for the students' survival is the bus driver, Claude Fisher, a World War Two veteran with a bad heart. Fisher has been warned by the school's medical examiner that this is the last year he will be allowed to drive. In all his 27 years of driving he has never had a serious accident.

As the bus is being swept into the raging and powerful currents, Fisher frantically worries how he will be able to save his boys and girls. As he wades through muddy and knee-deep icy water filling his bus, his world suddenly turns dark.