A NORTH-EAST medical worker told yesterday how she was scuba diving off the Maldives when the tsunami passed over her head.

Borsha Sarker, who lives in Low Coniscliffe on the outskirts of Darlington, was about 20 metres down on what had been a normal dive.

"Suddenly we were shot along very fast, about 20mph, underwater," said Borsha from her hotel on an atoll off the island of Kuramathi.

"The coral was racing past, visibility was zero because of the sand in the water, and some of us grabbed hands to stay together.

"A couple of our group got detached and ended up about a quarter of a mile away."

The dive leaders took the group to the surface and a rescue boat carried them back to their hotel.

Borsha's husband Keith Gunning, a surgeon at Darlington Memorial Hospital, had stayed on land while she went diving.

The island's protected location in the centre of the Maldives, and the fact that it was low tide when the tsunami struck, appears to have prevented Kuramathi from being swamped.

"We are really lucky," said Borsha, who works in the scan department at Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Gateshead. "We were in Galle, in Sri Lanka, last week, and we are wondering whether some of the people we met there are still alive."

Borsha's parents, Ajit and Fal, who live in Croft, North Yorkshire, spent Boxing Day anxiously dialling the Foreign Office helpline number.

"I was standing there, pressing redial from nine o'clock until half-past-two," said Fal.

Willie Johnstone from Sunderland fled his hotel in the resort of Patong on the Thai island of Phuket.

The solicitor said: "I looked out of the balcony window and the sea was coming up the road towards me. I honestly thought I was going to die.

"After that, I and hundreds of others basically ran like hell for high ground.

"The place is utterly devastated - buildings torn down, buses up trees.

"Thousands of people, locals and tourists, are wandering around aimlessly."

Dr Charles Viva, a Middlesbrough plastic surgeon, has spent much of the past two days on the phone to relatives and friends in his native Sri Lanka.

He said: "I got through to my sister in Sri Lanka and, by God's grace, she is fine. However, I am still waiting to hear from my other relatives in the north who had to leave their home when they saw 20 and 30ft waves."

Mr Viva often visits Asian countries on mercy missions giving free surgery to people with deformities.