CARL AZUZ, CNN ANCHOR: Earthquakes greater than magnitude 8.0 are rare and potentially devastating. They only happen every five to ten years. The one that violently shook part of Chile this week leads off today`s edition of CNN STUDENT NEWS. It happened late on Tuesday, off northern Chile`s Pacific Coast. An 8.2 magnitude tremor that also caused the tsunami. What`s incredible is, the damage appears to be limited. There were landslides and power outages, at least six people lost their lives. Thousands of homes had serious damage or destroyed, and more than 900,000 people were evacuated. But despite that, a quake this powerful is capable of catastrophic damage, so officials are saying, this could have been much worse.

The Pacific region still wasn`t in the clear, though, even a day later. The tsunami waves that hit northern Chile measured around seven feet. What a Chilean official described is like high tide. But you can see from this animation that they don`t just go away. They move across the ocean. And officials in Indonesia were warning people there to be on alert, though the tsunami waves there were expected to be less than three feet.

Both Chile and Indonesia are all too familiar with earthquakes. The two nations are located on what`s called "the Ring of Fire, a horseshoe shape line around the Pacific Ocean where there`s a lot of earthquake and volcanic activity.

CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: This is a subduction zone. It`s the line between two plates, the Nazca Plate, the South American plate here, the Nazca Plate here. The Nazca Plate is actually diving under the South American Plate building the Andes Mountains. And they`ve been doing that now for millions and millions of years. The problem with the big earthquakes that we see here - unlike other subduction zones and this is the crease right here, this plate would be diving below this plate here, which is just sitting here. This was a thrustfall, so as this, came together last night, and they`ve been going together for years and years and years, something popped right along this plate boundary right here, and all of a sudden the sea floor lifted. And because this sea floor lifted, that`s how we got the tsunami to go that way and also tsunami to go this way.

The problem with the Chilean sea floor and the Chilean earthquakes, is that they are pretty much shallow. Somewhere less than 50 miles deep. And so, when that shakes, it really shakes hard. A lot of subduction zone earthquakes are 200 miles deep, and there`s a lot of padding between the shaking part and the earth surface where we live. But here in Chile, it is not that way. One great thing about where this tsunami happened, even though it was only about a six to eight foot wave. This is not a very highly populated area, because you look at this cliff. These cliffs here are almost of insanity, as we call them, right down here, there is not a lot of place for people to live there. Now, the people that do live here, live right along the coast because they have to, it`s the only flat land and that`s where - where we saw that, some (INAUDIBLE) areas here, just at the north EKK did see this water coming up and getting right into that community right through here.

AZUZ: A different kind of disaster, a massive landslide recently struck in Washington State. A week and a half later, officials had confirmed the deaths of 29 people, but around 20 others are still missing.

The North Cascade Mountains had seen a lot of rain by March 22 when a hillside just gave way. Recovery officials are struggling to sort through a square mile of mud.

ANA CABRERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: This is ground zero of the Washington landslide, our first look at the destruction at close. Debris, piled up to 80 feet high in some spots. Tires, twisted cables, large appliances and uprooted trees. The only decipherable objects in the mangled mess. Images don`t fully capture the devastation. This neighborhood was mutilated by the enormous force and power of land and water that ripped through this valley.

LT. RICHARD BURKE, BELLEVUE FIRE DEPT.: Our family`s just gotten bigger, we kind of adopted the town of Oso (ph) or maybe they have adopted us.

CABRERA: A week and a half after the disaster the driving force for workers remains finding victims. Nearly two dozen people are still missing.

(on camera): Would you be able to find all of the victims?

BURKE: We`re going to try. I mean that`s the crystal ball question.

CABRERA (voice over): The debris field is full of a toxic sludge, a combination of human waste, chemicals from households as well as propane tanks, oil and gas making the search effort extremely dangerous.

Every person, animal and thing that comes out of here, has to be decontaminated. Workers are forced to wait for some areas to dry out before investigating.

All of this heavy equipment is helping to clear the debris off the road to provide more access for rescuers, but the debris is staying put. Until hand crews can come and go through these piles to pull belongings for family members who`ve lost everything.

Two American flags fly among the men and women working here. One recovered from the debris hangs in reverence for lives lost. Another flag at half- staff on a lone tree left standing in the slide zone.

A source of strength and a symbol of hope for better days ahead. Ana Cabrera, CNN, Arlington, Washington.