FORMER workers at a North-East cement works have watched in horror as images of the tsunami disaster unfold.

A number of staff from Lafarge Cement's Eastgate works, in County Durham, were sent to Indonesia to help expand the company's Asian operations before the Weardale site closed in 2002.

Now those employees who spent time working overseas are clinging to the hope that some of the friends they made while working in Banda Aceh - one of the worst hit areas of Indonesia have survived.

Among them are electronics maintenance engineer Tony Parvin and wife Clare, originally from Wolsingham, in Weardale.

The couple, now living in Australia with two young sons, are facing the fact that all the Indonesian people they befriended during their five- year stay in Banda Aceh could be dead.

Mr Parvin's mother Jean said: "They have been trying to contact friends out there since it happened but have not heard a thing about a single one.

"They desperately want to know if two young women who worked as their housekeepers, and their children, survived."

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