Safe from Nature?

Earthquake in Buffalo, NY

       The recent events in Japan has got Mom asking me for scientific reasons behind Japan's latest tsunami disaster. I'm not a environmental science major and I don't pretend to be one, so I tried to explain what I remembered from my earth science requirement. That, however, had me thinking of the recent reports in earth's changing nature: the shifting axis, the changing magnetic poles, earthquakes happening it isn't expected. It wasn't that long ago when a mild tremor occurred in the DC area, my birth place, the latest in rare east coast earthquakes.  Haiti only compounds the issue.

At the moment I told mom that we lived too far inland for tsunami to affect us. I had to, as she's seen too many hurricanes in her day. But with the way the world keep acting "out of order" I don't know how long I can keep telling her that. If the country that gave the name for the disaster wasn't prepared for it, how can I possibly prepare Mom for her first "derecho?"