Hi C,
You didn't get The Man Who Predicts Earthquakes, huh? (While I discuss more in the Good-bye, California? chapter (some scientists told me if a landslide happens after a quake in the Tahoe region, a seiche could occur and last for hours, much like water in bathtub or dishpan, sloshing back and forth and causing great destruction as it has done hundreds of years ago. Okay, here it is in the Berkland Glossary:

Seiche: A wave set up in an enclosed body of water from a large earthquake. It's higher when the lake is deep, with a long axis parallel to the incoming seismic waves. The run-up from such a wave may be hundreds of yeards. The body of water can be hundreds of miles from a large earthquake and still create a seiche (pronounded "saysh").

Tsunami: In Japanese, it literally means a "harbor wave." sometimes called a "tidal wave." It's unrelated to tides. It requires a sudden movement on the sea floor, from an earthquake with a verticall component of fault movement, from a large sub-sea landslide, from an exploxion of volcanic island...Significant tsunamis generally requre the energy released along a fault to be a magnitude 7.5 or greater. A tsunami can travel 500 miles per hours in the deep sea, whetere it's only a few feet high. As it approaches coastlines, it can reach more than 100 feet high with a run-up of miles inland. Even a tsunami of 10 feet high can be highly destructive to life and property.