When the quake struck, three of Sanotona Halawa?s children bolted upstairs. That could have saved them three months ago when giant waves devastated northern Indonesia, but this time it was a fatal error.

Halawa, 48, was among thousands of people on Nias island who were mourning dead relatives yesterday or digging through rubble in the faint hope of finding survivors. The body of his 20-year-old son Yurisman could be seen lying face down among the concrete remains of his house.

?During the tragedy, (Yurisman) ran upstairs followed by his brother and sister,? he told Reuters. ?I was in the bathroom and just prayed to Lord Jesus Christ. I asked him to show me the way,? said Halawa, part of the island?s Christian majority in predominantly Muslim Indonesia.

His prayers were answered when he was able to scramble through a window of the bathroom, which was in a separate building from the main house. But he had lost hope of finding alive Evinaria, his 16-year-old daughter, or Fangutule, his 24-year-old son.

Others in the main town of Gunungsitoli were using shovels and crowbars to dig through the ruins of their houses in the hope their loved ones had miraculously survived. ?I saw her breathing this morning,? said Ramadin who was trying to shatter a block of concrete with a crowbar to dig out his aunt.

The quake came just three months after a bigger one triggered a tsunami that swept the Indian Ocean, leaving nearly 300,000 dead or missing. The stench of dead bodies, familiar from the tsunami that killed more than 100 on Nias, had begun to fill the air. More than 1,000 people are feared dead in Nias and neighbouring islands, although only a few hundred bodies have so far been recovered.