A minivan school bus carrying four preschoolers and a matron and driven at high speed by a man wanted on a drug charge veered into the wrong lane on a Brooklyn street yesterday and plowed into parked cars, a traffic light, a concrete pillar and a marble-and-iron fence, the police said.

No one was seriously injured in the lurching, 150-foot skein along Church Avenue near Stratford Road in Prospect Park South at 8:10 a.m., although witnesses said the passengers - two boys and two girls under 5 and an escort on their way to a school for disabled children - were severely shaken.

Police officers said they found the driver incoherent and foaming at the mouth, and the children and their escort terrified, but not badly hurt, apparently saved by seat belts. There was evidently no oncoming traffic when the bus veered out of control at a speed witnesses put at 65 miles an hour, an estimate apparently buttressed by long snaking skid marks on the pavement.

Along the route of the pinball chaos, the police also found two sideswiped parked cars, a toppled mailbox, a traffic-light pole that had been knocked down and dragged under the chassis, a brake-shoe from a wheel that had come off of the minivan, various car parts and pieces of a 10-foot-tall flower-box pillar that had virtually exploded when hit, scattering concrete chunks across sidewalks and lawns.

The bus driver, Raymond Gallant, 54, was arrested at the scene and charged with driving under the influence of drugs. Law enforcement officials said he was wanted on an outstanding warrant for failure to appear in court on a narcotics charge more than a decade ago.

The police said the address on Mr. Gallant's driver's license was 409 Putnam Avenue, Brooklyn. The building, in Bedford-Stuyvesant, is a boarded-up four-story brownstone that was a halfway house for addicts until six months ago and had recently been under renovation. Some neighbors identified Mr. Gallant as a former resident of the house.

Law enforcement officials said he was employed by Missy Transportation, of 2749 Stillwell Avenue, Brooklyn. A woman who answered the telephone there yesterday afternoon said the company would not comment because a police investigation was under way.

An official of the city's Department of Transportation said Missy Transportation had been under contract since last January to carry pupils of the William O'Connor-Bay Ridge School, a private but publicly funded institution that offers pre-kindergarten classes for disabled children and others with special needs.

The three-story yellow-brick school at 420 95th Street, near Fourth Avenue in Bay Ridge, about four miles southwest of the scene of the accident, is part of the New York League for Early Learning. The principal, Clare Bonafede, declined to comment, other than to say that the city was responsible for providing bus services to the pupils.

It was unclear how long Mr. Gallant had worked for Missy Transportation, and whether it had checked his background at the time of employment. It was also unclear where he had lived recently.

Arellette Lee, 33, of Putnam Avenue, recalled Mr. Gallant as a short, stocky man who lived at the halfway house until it closed six months ago. She said he wore a blue bus driver's uniform, drove a Lincoln Town Car and left for work about 6 a.m. on weekdays. "When he was here, he pretty much kept to himself," she said. "He was a quiet dude. I knew he was on drugs because he was in a halfway house."

The names of the children and the matron riding in Mr. Gallant's bus were not released. They were treated at Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn for cuts and bruises and released. Mr. Gallant was also treated for minor injuries, the police said.

Law enforcement officials said his yellow bus was speeding west on Church Avenue toward Stratford Road when, about 30 yards before the intersection, it veered into the opposite lane. It struck two cars parked on the south side, driving one up onto the sidewalk, where it toppled a mailbox.

The bus then knocked down a traffic light on the southeast corner of the intersection. The stanchion fell under the chassis, became entangled and was dragged along. Across Stratford Road the bus rammed a tall concrete pillar on the southwest corner, a neighborhood marker topped by red flowers. The pillar flew apart, sending concrete chunks hurtling 20 to 30 feet. The bus halted against a waist-high wall of marble slate topped by black wrought iron that encircles the broad lawn of a large white-shingled house.

By late afternoon, the damaged vehicles had been towed away, a temporary traffic light had been installed, and the remnants of a violent morning were scattered about: oil spots coated with sand, and some hard-to-identify car parts.

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