This study, regarding the effects of a 9.1 earthquake in Alaska, made the front page of the LA Times this morning:

http://www.weather.com/news/report-tsunami-would-swamp-californias-economy-20130905ijkk

The bad news - coastal areas like long Beach will be devastated. The good news - the area will have several hours warning.

I suppose this is one more factor in favor of South Dakota.

Working Link

Only real bad stuff to deal with here is tornadoes. Well, we get some wicked blizzards, too.

That was a Southern Cal perspective from the LA Times. For a Northern Cal perspective of the same report, you can read this article.

We would have about an hour less warning from an Alaska quake than Southern California. Much of the interior land areas of the San Francisco Bay are landfill, and not very high, so are quite vulnerable. The Port of Oakland (a major West coast port) and the Oakland Airport would both be knocked out for a while, it seems.

I recently saw a video from the Japan tsunami that I had not seen before. I will post a link to it after I go home and find the link again. It's another jaw dropping example of the deceptively sneaky way that a tsunami can start small and grow and grow to wreak total havoc.

A tsunami doesn't have to be this gigantic wave that breaks at the beach and crashes into shore. There's this image from the Indonesian tsunami that we've all seen many times where a tsunami smashes into a seawall and sends spray high into the air. But more often, it's like someone leaving the faucet in the bathtub running and the water level just keeps rising and rising until all your floating bath toys spill over the side and crash to the floor--and the water keeps on coming.

The effects of a tsunami depend considerably upon the shape of the terrain, both above and below sea level. Merely going inland isn't necessarily effective, especially if you are traveling up a river valley or other low lying area. You want to gain elevation.

My local county has modeled the extent of a ten foot tsunami and identified areas of risk, complete with cute little warning signs.

Correct. Often tsunamis act more like a very high tide that comes in very fast. Also keep in mind that tsunamis are often multiple waves that can come in over a period of many hours. And frequently the first one is not the hightest one. Much of the death and destruction in a tsunami is from debris carried in the fast moving water. Trees, houses, and other junk gets carried along by the water and acts like battering rams.

If a tsunami warning sounds, get to the highest ground you can, as fast as you can! If you cant get to high ground then find a very big, very sturdy building and go up several floors. Move fast!

And whatever you do, don't go down to the shore in order to watch the action, something that happens with surprising frequency....

I believe most coastal areas (at least on the west coast) have modeled or are in the process of modeling how high a tsunami could go.

For Washington State see Washinton Emergency Management's Tsunami page.

For Oregon, go to Oregon Tsunami Clearinghouse.

For California see California Tsunami Inundation Maps.

Alaska is still developing tsunami mapping. See the AEIC's Tsunami Mapping page. Fortunately for us in Anchorage, the configuration of upper Cook Inlet dissapates tsunamis before they get to Anchorage. In the 1964 quake there was no tsumami at Anchorage. However, Valdez, Seward, Kodiak, and Seldovia were hit hard with loss of life. Near the epicenter, the village of Chenega was obliterated with 23 (out of 75) villagers killed.

For lots of good general tsunami info see NOAA's TsunamiReady page.

After I posted my note upthread about tsunami info sites, I realized I had forgotton our friends in British Columbia. I'm less familiar with the Canadian geo-hazard info, but I found this link:

Emergency Management BC Tsunami Information

Great! Now being "underwater on your property" will no longer be just a figure of speech...