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I lived in Bremerton and on Capitol hill in Seattle for ten years, got a real feel for the neighborhood. 1967 to 1977.

It was as much at risk then as now. It does paint a real cheerful picture, thinking of those fleet balistic missle submarines near Bremerton rolling around the hillsides like so much cordwood after the Tsunami returns.

Hawaii has got another killer scenario. The big island, you know where all the lava flows are around Mauna Loa? There too the islands have debris lines up at the 200 to 300 ft vertical mark. It has really been a mystery, until deep ocean surveys were done. Then an amazing circumstance becomes self evident. You know the volcano rises from a much deeper level on the Pacific in a steep cone, and that at the top the lava flows into sheets many square miles in area, and when the bottom of the slopes are examined, deep under water, there are pieces of those sheets deposited there. It wasn't until somebody realized those sheets break off from the top and slide down to the bottom that the mechanism was recognized. This is why the volcano has a cone shaped appearance. Sheets are forming at the top, dozens of square miles in area and hundreds of feet thick, then when the slope they form on can't hold them up anymore, they scoot to the bottom and accumulate at the base, giving the volcano its cone shape.

The next crack in the current sheet has been identified and the government volcano research center there has built a hut over one portion of it to track even the most minute changes, and will probably be able to sound the alarm at least hours before it finally gives way. It could be anytime; tomorrow or a thousand years from now. When it gives, quite a few square miles of ocean will be given quite a fast shove and the wave could propagate up to the historical levels of wave-born debris.