An earthquake which may have registered as high as 8.8 on the Richter scale has struck the nation of Chile.

The quake struck at 3:34am local time and the epicenter was just off the coast near the city of Conception (population near 1 million) and within 200 miles rom the capital city of Santiago (population 5 million).

Just to compare, the Haitian quake registered 7.0 while the 1906 San Francisco quake came in around 7.9 (est).

The Richter scale is logarithmic which means this quake is roughly 10 times the force of the 1906 quake and close to 100 times the strength of the Haitian quake.

There is also a tsunami warning.

Because the quake occurred at 3am it is likely that we will have no clear death toll until the morning arrives. We can only hope that the toll will be low due to better building construction in the region