THE dramatic coastline of County Durham will be lit up in the biggest firework display the North-East has ever seen tonight.

Tens of thousands of spectators are expected to watch as 30,000 fireworks, containing 4,000 kilos of explosive, light up 11 miles of Durham Coast in the free Sea of Lights festival in the Easington area.

The event is a celebration of the work of the Turning The Tide partnership, which has spent five years and £10m cleansing the county's coastline.

As well as the immense firework display there will be ten Second World War searchlights, some based on ships moored off the coast, and a flare path of 50 gas beacons on the clifftops. The Dogdy Clutch Theatre Company will be building fire sculptures.

Schoolchildren from across east Durham will hold lanterns they will build from willow branches.

The event will be choreographed to specially commissioned music written by internationally famous local musician Jez Lowe.

Spectators are advised to view from sites at Dawdon, Easington Colliery and Crimdon Caravan Park, where the curve of the coast allows near-perfect views.

The cleansing programme, which involved nearly 90 separate projects, began two years after the last of the coastal pits closed in 1993.

The coast had suffered from 100 years of colliery spoil tipping, blackening the beaches which were featured in classic British gangster movie Get Carter. More than 1.3m tonnes of spoil, some of it 60ft deep, has been removed from the beaches. Of the £10m spent on the project, £4.5m came from the National Lottery-backed Millennium Commission.

Other grants have come from such organisations as the Northumbrian Water Group.

The event starts at 7pm. The Easington Colliery site will not be accessible by car, but a free bus service will be provided to the Easington and Dawdon sites