Natural and man-made "ocean-breaks" muffle the effects of these kinds of oceanic disturbances. Cities on deeper coastal shelfs that lack these kinds of breakers are hence more at risk. Anyone know off-hand which these are? Florida seems to come to mind....
This is what a seismologist in our local paper said:
There could not be a tsunami on the US east coast similar to Asia's. There are no plate boundaries in the Atlantic. The Mid-Atlantic ridge is an accretion ridge as opposed to where plates meet in the Pacific ocean.
It is where oceanic crust is being produced as opposed to being eaten up. That is why the east coast doesn't have a warning system. It has been studied by teh USGS and it was determined there was no need for it.
Historically there have been no records of anything like that happening in the Atlantic, but there have been some big tidal waves in Alaska, Hawaii and Japan.