The Ring of Fire is a horseshoe-shaped line of volcanoes and deep ocean trenches that runs around the Pacific Rim: from New Zealand up through Tonga, New Guinea, Indonesia, Japan, the Aleutian Island Chain, Alaska, and down the West Coast of Canada, the United States, Mexico, and Central America, finally ending where the southern end of Chile meets Argentina near Cape Horn at the tip of South America

A hurricane-driven storm surge can be as destructive and deadly as a major tsunami started by an undersea earthquake or exploding volcano In fact, tropical cyclones -- called hurricanes in the Atlantic, typhoons in the eastern Pacific, and cyclones in Australia, Bangladesh, and India -- have done far more damage in the past 100 years than tsunamis

Can a tsunami strike the coast of New Jersey, North Carolina, or Florida The question crossed my mind as I was doing research for my action/adventure novel TSUNAMI, even though the book is set in the Pacific