Is 8.8 high on the Ritcher earthquake scale?

Answer 1

Yes magnitude 8.8 is a large earthquake.

The Chile earthquake of February 27th, 2010 is the 5th largest ever recorded.

In terms of energy it is 500 times more powerful than the magnitude 7.0 of January 12th, 2010 Haitian earthquake. Haiti was equivalent to a 32 megaton nuclear bomb (2,000 times the atom bomb on Hiroshima), where as the Chilean earthquake was equivalent to a 15.8 gigaton bomb (a million Hiroshima Bombs).

There have been much larger earthquakes. The Indian ocean earthquake of December 26th, 2010 was magnitude 9.1. It had the equivalent energy of a 67 gigaton bomb (4 million Hiroshima bombs), over 4 times as large as Chile 2010.

The largest earthquake on record occurred in 1960 about 100 miles south of the Chile 2010 earthquake. It measured mag 9.5. It the equivalent energy of 178 gigatons of TNT or 11 million Hiroshima bombs.

It is believed that the asteroid that struck the earth 65.5 million years ago causing the extinction of all non avian dinosaurs caused an earthquake 13.0 on the Richter scale. This would have had the energy of 10,000 teratons of TNT or 6.6 billion Hiroshima Bombs. ( This is purely the earthquake and does not include energy calculations from other phenomena such as heat wave etc)

Answer 2

The Richter scale doesn't go past 10. An 8.8 magnitude earthquake is considered a major event capable of causing widespread damage and loss of life.