Spurred by last month’s tsunami disaster, U.S. officials announced Friday they’ll deploy a tsunami warning system that will help protect virtually every coastal resident of the United States, including those who live near the Atlantic Ocean.

The United States will spend $37.5 million to place about 30 deep-water detection buoys and other sensors in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and the Caribbean Sea, complementing a warning system already in place on the Pacific coast and giving the United States nearly 100 percent coverage, officials said.

Though planned years ago, the deployment of the system in the Atlantic and Caribbean was accelerated after last month’s disaster in and around the Indian Ocean. The expanded system, which also will better protect residents of Caribbean islands and Central and South America, could be in place by mid-2007.

“The world’s attention has been focused on people who live near the edge of oceans, and we have a responsibility to respond to their needs,” John H. Marburger III, science adviser to President Bush, said during a news conference in Washington, D.C., that was broadcast live on the Internet.

Scientists say tsunamis, particularly those caused by earthquakes as powerful as the one off Indonesia, don’t pose a great risk to the East Coast.

But they do occur occasionally in the Atlantic basin, which includes the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico, especially in the Caribbean, where many islands sit atop volcanoes or are near earthquake zones.

Tsunamis — smaller than last month’s but deadly nonetheless — struck the Virgin Islands in 1867, Puerto Rico in 1918 and the Dominican Republic in 1946.

Government officials said that, in addition to tsunami sensors, the system would include risk assessment studies and — particularly important — improvements in warning and response systems.