to leave those low-lying areas. right to kathy quiano. what are you hearing and seeing from regions most at risk? >> we heard that the very strong quake, a magnitude 8.1 according to officials just hit the area. now, it's not clear this is an aftershock. the area has been experiencing those after the first quake hit. some residents were told -- went back to their homes and shopped but again moving to safer ground after this very, very strong aftershock. authorities also say they're not lifting a tsunami watch or warning yet and still telling people to stay away from the coastline if possible and higher ground. there are no reports that a tsunami watch was from the first quake but still watching and monitoring and telling people not to return to areas near the coastline so maybe their homes and their shops. >> kathy, how long before they know? because we can remind folks about the 2004 earthquake and subsequent tsunami. that was a 9.3 magnitude earthquake, so we're talking about the first earthquake in indonesia today at 8.6. you just talked about an 8.1 potential aftershock. back in 2004, 9.3 ultimately something like 230,000 people were killed. the damage was spread across to 14 countries. the waves were described in some areas as high as 98 feet and banda aceh sustained some of the worst damage. how long before they know if a killer wave and that's no exaggeration is coming that direction once again? >> well, earlier officials told us that they were going to wake about an hour and a half to two hours after the first quake hit. that's calculations based on the distance of the epicenter from the coastline saying a tsunami would have hit certain arias of the coast already but so far as i said again there have been no reports of that happening. so they were saying that about this time actually at about 6:00 local time they were going to lift the warning but with this new aftershock or earthquake that just hit a few minutes ago that might change and we just expect the agency and officials here to keep the tsunami watch on for a bit longer. >> all right, kathy quiano joining us from jakarta. let's introduce our panel, john fugelsang and will cain and whenever i see pictures of this like banda aceh, i spent a lot of time covering that earthquake and the subsequent tsunami that came in. i was based in thailand and the damage was not to be believed. the water line, especially in phuket was just devastating doesn't even come close to it. so i'm always surprised it's an inexact science when the tsunami could hit. they're sort of waiting to see when they can clear people. >> for something with such devastation. unfathomable. your experience is untranslatable to the three of us. i certainly didn't. the number, 230,000. that's just -- >> 14 countries. >> impossible for me to wrap my mind around. >> the weirder thing, even in the japanese earthquake, planes would buzz by and say, tsunami warning, tsunami coming, tsunami coming and that could be, you know, six inches or could be multiple feet. you just don't know. it doesn't look like anything. we would sit there and try to decide, do we run or do we stay with our live shot because often the warnings were don't turn out to be anything. crazy. >> in the case of phuket people had no way of knowing. my manager was on the beach in phuket and the folks on the beach had no idea it was coming. knew the earthquake was coming but it receded out so far people began running down to it, running to the waves just before it happened and he saved one child and was an able to save another child. those of us in the first world have no idea the effect of that earthquake, the photos on tv did no justice to it. >> devastation i think is often like that you sit there and you could spend the entire time reporting it saying, the pictures you're seeing are not close at all to how bad this is. it's incredible. >> for the best here. >> we'll keep watching and tell everybody as we follow. it'll be interesting to see if the 8.1 that kathy was reporting after the 8.6 original report was a new earthquake or was that an aftershock. we'll keep watching it for you. other story we're watching, of course, is the latest in what is happening in george zimmerman/trayvon martin case. big question today, where is he? george zimmerman, everybody wants to know. his attorneys had this bombshell announcement that they're dropping the case. i spoke to them a few minutes ago. they said against their advice, zimmerman had reached out to talk to the special prosecutor angela corey. they said they were not revealing a confidence in telling us that because that's the advice they will give to any client, anything has to go through them. in the middle of negotiating these conversations with the special prosecutor when the special prosecutor called them and said, you know your client called us. they hadn't been able to reach him at all so apparently he was reaching out to some news organization, as well. >> yeah, well, they might not have broken a privilege or confidence in relaying that information to you or ashleigh or zoraida. they might have have when they talked about his mental state. speculating on his mental state. everything we're hearing this morning, i think we're going to have a conversation later with jose baez, this is really walking the line on attorney/client privilege, speculating on his mental state. >> you've never met in person. >> calling these guys his lawyers is questionable at this point. i mean -- >> i say ex. >> even though -- >> they left the window open. they said if he wanted to come back, they would represent him yet again. >> here's a little bit of the interview i did and we'll talk on the other side. take a look. >> ethically the prosecutor said we can't talk to you, we know you have representation so we can't talk to you which was the right thing to do. they tipped us off, so it was all done aboveboard and, you know, just so that we remain aboveboard we couldn't go on doing interviews and talking about the case as though we were representing george zimmerman when sometime around -- sometime on sunday, something changed. as of saturday, everything -- you know, the relationship i had with george zimmerman that we had with george zimmerman was good. we were proceeding, we were going on the shows and speaking out on his behalf and we were going to continue to represent him whichever direction the case went in the legal forum and that stopped and he failed to return phone call, failed to return texts. >> any clue -- >> i'll call you after 9:00. >> any clue as to what happened from saturday to sunday or anything that happened on saturday that tipped you off to what happened on sunday? >> no, nothing that i can tell, only, you know, that there was a website set up where he started collecting money and, you know, he started contacting people outside. he was trying to call the prosecutor. all these things, i mean, him setting up his own website was fine because that makes sure -- i don't have any -- i never touch his money and that's good for me. the contacts with other people, probably would have been better if he waited a little while before he was making contacts but when he -- when he wanted to make his statement to the prosecutor's office, i didn't have a problem with him doing that either. there was just a process to go through. why, you know, and what happened over that period of time, i've been in contact with family and so on, i don't haveny answers as to what's going on. >> let us make it also clear, the website that we set up that we set up in conjunction with his father so that any money collected through that website would go directly to an account that we didn't have the ability to touch or do anything with was a family funding website, as well. >> so how often were you talking to him before you lost contact obviously between saturday and sunday? were you talking to him a couple times a day, five types a day? >> it would depend on the day. sometimes it would be a couple times. sometimes it would be more than that. sometimes it would be just one time a day. but just to keep contact of what we were doing with the case, what we were doing as far as going on the different program, doing the interviews and trying to raise the public perception to trying to encourage the public to look at the evidence instead of jumping on the bandwagon to just, you know, sentence george zimmerman to prison or whatever else they wanted to do. to hear the facts of what happened and show that, you know, he really was agoing in self-defense that night. >> have you heard from george zimmerman ever since you've held that press conference? >> no. >> it's interesting. so you talked -- >> no times two. >> i gathered. you have talked about at the press conference that you believe that he seemed distraught to you. are you worried about his emotional state and his physical safety right now? >> yes, i'm still concerned about george and his mental state and his physical safety. he was -- he is a good man, something -- a very tragic situation happened. it's been very distressful to him. i believe in his innocence. i believe that he was in this whole thing, that he was the victim and he -- of this, you know, when he was attacked and defended himself and now he's become the victim of basically the media has put an improper spin on this case and, you know, my concern is for him. and if he would want us to come back and represent him, we'd be glad to represent him but at this point he's making that impossible for us to ethically come out and say we represent george zimmerman then the next question is when was the last time you talked to him? we haven't talked to him and had communication in nearly three days now and we're left with no other -- nothing ethically we could do except remove ourselves from the case. >> so when you say you're worried about him, are you worried that someone could injure him? are you worried that he could harm himself? >> i'm worried that someone is going to injure him. i don't have any indication he's going to harm himself. >> you said that you -- >> there have been -- you know what, there have been a lot of people, a lot of folks in the blogosphere and so forth who made statements way beyond responsible saying if no one else does we'll get justice for trayvon. those sorts of statements are troubling. we don't know, of course, from any one of them whether they're just a lot of talk or whether there's someone who has that kind of intent but if i were george zimmerman i'd be very concerned about it. >> do you know who he's been getting advice from? we've had an opportunity to talk to some of his neighbors and his friends who clearly were in some kind of contact with him and then they would come on the air and talk to us. who is he talking to? if he's not talking to you? >> i don't know. i would just be speculating if i did because he's cut off contact with us, and, you know, if he wanted to -- i would have appreciated if he would have said, i think i'll listen to this person and not you and i don't want you to represent me anymore. that would have made it easier. instead it was, just, i'll call you at 9:00, then 9:00 comes and goes and there's no phone call, no text, no e-mail and because we have never met face to face, it was all communication through the telephone and text messages and e-mail and that's just been stopped at this point. >> have you talked to his father and i know his brother, as well, have been vocal in the media and sort of asked them, hey, you know, what's going on? where is he? >> yes, i spoke -- well, i've never spoken with the brother, but i've had regular contact with his father and they didn't have any information to share with me on that of why he's not calling me back either. >> you said something interesting yesterday, mr mr. uhrig, you said for those who think you'll find him he's far away from florida, of course, that meant for many trying to decide was he on the run? was he hiding for his safety in the united states? has he left the united states? can you elaborate on that for me? >> sure, a lot of people are quick to jump to conclusions and usually the conclusions that they had before they heard the facts, all i was trying to represent is for those people who might be thinking about staking out family members' hopes or friends' homes and either endangering them or causing them any distress, no point in doing that. he hasn't left the country. he's not going to flee. he wouldn't have called the prosecutor's office and asked to come in and tell his side of the story if he was fleeing, clearly he is represented to us, routinely that if he is charged, he will turn himself in. we have no doubt, no reason to believe he's changed his mind about that. but the fact that he's hiding for his own safety shouldn't be interpreted to be that he's hiding from the authorities or planning to flee. >> you said you have seen evidence that could change the course of public opinion and i know you don't want to get into the specifics, but can you categorize it for me? what can you say about that evidence? is it physical evidence from that night that the police are holding on to. is it someone's version of the stories as an eyewitness that might come forward and say something? what are you talking about? >> there's a lot of evidence that hasn't been released yet. i think once everyone sees that, if they'll even look at it because, quite frankly, there's evidence out there and no one is paying -- is looking at all the evidence. they're taking bits and pieces and drawing the conclusion that there was a murder and there wasn't. mr. george zimmerman acted in self-defense but when all the evidence is brought out by the police and everyone sees the whole picture they'll see that george zimmerman acted in self-defense and there are things we know that we've agreed not to disclose and i'm not going to disclose that now either. >> attorneys hal uhrig and craig sonner, they used to represent george zimmerman telling us today they no longer represent him. they haven't talked to him since saturday. haven't had a conversation that was scheduled for sunday and they are dropping him as a client. but as you said, john, it's always open so that could change. still ahead on "starting point," lesson number 98, why you shouldn't walk and text because there could be a big giant black bear in front of you. this is the bear. yeah, that one right there. that's glendale, california. it's our get real this morning. plus rick santorum bows out. says the work, though, isn't over. does that mean he'll jump on mitt romney's bandwagon to unite the party. we'll talk to the santorum campaign about the next step. heading out to work you don't need to miss the rest of the show, check it out at c cnn.com/startingpoint. do you love the sun? 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"i'm with scottrade." ♪ [music] many republicans didn't feel that santorum could win the general election and that coming out against birth control lost them the female vote and coming out against internet porn lost them the male vote. it's hard to win when you lose both the male and the female votes. those two blocs are pretty strong, yeah. yeah. >> jay leno. so much fodder when it comes to the election year. santorum called his bid for the presidency a miracle after miracle. but this morning, the former senator is out of the presidential race. here's what he said. >> we made the decision to get into this race at our kitchen table, against all the odds and we made a decision over the weekend that while this presidential race for us is over for me and we will suspend our campaign effective today, we are not done fighting. >> big question now is can you go from saying mitt romney is the worst republican in the country to take on president obama to then saying everyone should go vote for mitt romney? alice stewart is the national press secretary of senator rick santorum's 2012 presidential campaign and joins us this morning. thanks for talking to us. we heard senator santorum say last night he's not done fighting. what literally does that mean? not done fighting. >> well, he has a lot of work yet to do. he had a nice conversation with governor romney yesterday and vowed to do what he could to help, help coalesce conservatives, both social and fiscal conservatives, to rally behind the presumption tiff nominee that's more than likely appears to be governor romney because job number one is to defeat barack obama in his big government ways. just as important as defeating barack obama, we also need to help elect republicans up and down the ballot. we need to elect conservatives in the house and senate because it's critical that we have not just in the president -- the white house, but throughout congress we need conservative voices and we need conservative causes pushed and because we don't need to further agendas like obama care and the buffett rule. these are not the direction we need to be going in and rick will fight to make sure we have a conservative voice in washington. >> saying there's opportunities for help on a lot of fronts. will he stand up and endorse the former governor, mitt romney, who was at one point sort of an archenemy, i guess. he didn't say that in his remarks yesterday. >> well, certainly they were competitors over the past several months and what you do is you show the contrast but what he assured governor romney yesterday is that they'll have conversations in the next few days and weeks to come and he has vowed to do whatever it is that governor romney needs to help him defeat barack obama in november because that's important, and whatever he needs him to do, whether it's speaking, acting as surrogate work but rick has made a great name for himself and set himself up to do great things for the conservative cause in this country and he can go out and reach out to conservatives both the evangelicals and social and fiscal conservatives and bring them together because that's truly what we need, the obama re-election campaign is going to be a tremendous force. they've got a great amount of money and not to mention the fact he's got the power of the incumbency behind him so we need to rally behind the conservative cause and republicans need to get together to take on barack obama. >> so when you look at analysis of how the race went and you pointed out sort of looking back what people say about senator santorum, others say he elevated social issues on the campaign and in some ways, pu