rolando santos, the president of cnn chile joining us on the phone. we will be checking with you throughout the day. in the meantime, though, rob has moved into the weather center here at the cnn center here in atlanta, georgia. and i want you to give us a quick lesson on how strong a quake like this is. when we hear 8.8, that sounds like a pretty large one. put it in perspective for us. well, you have to remember the way the magnitude scale works, it s rhythmic equation that basically everything expands. if you go from 7 to 8, you re not just increasing it by whatever percentage that is, 20% or so. you re increasing it by 32 times the amount of energy released. so if you go from a 7.0, which that would be the haiti quake to an 8.0, you re looking at 500 times the amount of energy released, 500 times the strength. the usgs puts a number on it as