Say there's been a major earthquake and you want to get home to your family ASAP, about 80 miles away.

You were driving on the Interstate at the time and the overpass ahead of you collapsed, totally blocking the road.

The overpass isn't one with onramps and offramps.

There aren't many routes from where you are to where you want to go. There's a medium-sized river ahead of you, and the Interstate has the only bridge over it for quite a ways. If you go back to the last offramp, there are still no guarantees that you will be able to get around the fallen trees, buildings, debris, downed power lines, etc. The Interstate is your main chance for use of a vehicle, otherwise you'll be on foot.

Then you hear a shout and there's a man standing on top of the pile of concrete rubble in front of you. You want to go south. He wants to go north.

You're thinking that by sticking to the freeway and driving up the offramps and back down the onramps (where available), you might be able to get nearly home, or at least closer, before you had to continue on foot.

Aftershocks are continuing.

You're driving a 5-year-old Toyota.

Would you trade cars with him and take your chances that you could get through?

What if you were driving your new Mercedes?

Sue

Interesting questions...

I would think that trading cars may be feasible, but would I give up a Mercedes? That is very difficult to say as a 5 year old Toyota is probably worth 20% of a new base model Mercedes. In all reality and based on the scenario of an interstate highway, any vehicle is not going to get very far due to all the other traffic now backed up all around you. At this point, I would find the closest and hopefully safest spot to park the car and start looking for alternate transport even if that meant a very long, difficult multi-day walk...however that rules out getting home asap. Something to ponder over and see what others here think.

a person averages 2.5 miles per hour walking on flat terrain. be home in 32 hours, all things considered.

is the river bridge intact?

are there other bridges ahead of you that may also be down?

probably unknown.

in this scenario i'd go with the known - walking - as i feel giving your car to a stranger is fraught many issues. all you need is some law enforcement official to ask to see your insurance and registration. "well, we swapped cars, officer."

depends on how soon you need / want to be home.

for me, i looked closely at this issue several years ago and rerouted my way home, knowing full well that here in so cal the bridges will fall in THE BIG ONE and everyone else will be on the blocked roads too.

a bicycle is stored at work for the hope-it-never-happens ride home. i won't even consider driving. too many bridges and a couple of semi-wet, but crossable if needed, rivers between me and home.

great mind challenge!

While damage at or near the epicenter of a quake will be quite heavy, depending upon its intensity, the ill effects of the quake taper off remarkably as you move away from the epicenter. A distance of fifty miles can make quite a difference in terms of a dinged up infrastructure.

I would get out a map(s) and look at alternative, circuitous routes that would bring me to my objective, all the while listening to news sources to get some idea of where the major damage has occurred.

The long way around may be the short way home.

Of course, trading cars would be quite feasible for me - anyone interested in a 1992 van? only 178,000 easy miles accumulated while driving to soccer practice....

exchange identification (picture on phone)...keep your respective titles , sign mutual letters of exchange describing the conditions leading to the exchange, and for a specified period of time.....if defaulted seek legal help

Easy decision for me at this point.

I need to get home to my family ASAP. And a mercedes is not even close to a reality for me. Even if it was, I would like to think getting to my family is more important than the mercedes.

In any event, swap as much info as possible (names, addresses, phone numbers, etc), maybe consider swapping credit cards as a sign of good faith that after things settle down you'll contact each other again and swap vehicles and cards back. Maybe not such a good idea though if they give you their maxed out $200 limit card in exchange for your $5,000 limit card with no current balance. In this situation, I imagine I would do whatever it takes to get back on the road, though.

I am not really a material guy as you might have noticed. I like to think that after the fact, I could accept losing some material goods as long as me and mine are safe.

oops, misread the premise. big difference between "want" and "need." The particulars of the situation would further dictate my course of action.

Have I lost contact with loved ones? Cell phones down? No service?

Simply wanting to get home doesn't mean I have to get home. Without an urgent need to get home ASAP I'd probably take a detour, look for alternate routes, or hunker down where I am until the road is clear.

I would stick with my vehicle since it has gear I could use. Where I live, we have multiple alternate routes so I would go out of my way. It may take a while but I will find my way out of this maze.

Jeanette Isabelle

I think we can all agree that an overpass goes over something, right? Typically, that means some sort of supporting structure. Almost always that's some sort of packed earth, at some point in the overpass's support. So I'd just drive my truck up and over the little hill formed by the dirt. it might take some honking to get through if there's traffic backed up on that cross street (which I assume, since apparently their road/overpass collapsed)

I wouldn't give my truck up. It's got too much gear I could use.

Time to pull out the map and look for service roads, railroad right of ways, etc. With a 4x4, I've got options...

I drive a 4WD for work, and it is exactly lack of that particular choice that has me stalled. Here in the PNW, miles of the sides of the freeways are lined with thick, deep, tangled blackberry vines. Most areas appear to be old stands, probably six feet high. When the word impenetrable was invented, the person was probably looking at wild blackberries.

After blackberries, the freeways are mainly edged with stands of Douglas fir and alder, and you're not going ten feet through it even with a 4WD VW. And there are many freeway edges with concrete walls (even low ones) to direct runoff and eroded soil and debris from our heavy rainfall.

The other part of what I was thinking was: if the way ahead might be clear for multiple miles, and trading cars or walking were the two most viable choices, what's the difference between abandoning your vehicle at the edge of the freeway, and trading it with someone? How about in rain or snow or low temps?

Even in a bad quake, I doubt that all the overpasses will go down, and with most of those with exits, you could go up the exit ramp and then back down the entrance ramp. Even if available only part of the way, the freeways are still probably going to be the best way to travel. The side roads aren't going to be pristine: fallen trees, fallen power poles, collapsed buildings, power lines across the roads, abandoned vehicles, etc.

If it's a bad quake and multiple (not all) overpasses are down, it's probably going to be a long time before you will be able to get back to your vehicle. What shape will it be in by then? (This being America rather than Japan.)

Did you trade 15-20 miles on foot due to distrust of a stranger for a car that ended up being stripped, trashed, set on fire or cannibalized? Harking back to the thread on scavenging a car, keep in mind that most people will probably be quicker to cannibalize an abandoned car than their own. New tires? Your car ain't got no more stinking tires!



No, I can guarantee THAT'S not going to happen! I meant 80 miles as the parrot flies, and not under everyday, ideal conditions on pristine pavement, an easy stroll from Point A to Point B on a nice day with every other person handing you a sandwich and cold drink.

Eighty miles after a major quake could probably take three or four times that in actual traveled distance. You're going to be climbing over debris, hiking around totally destroyed areas, backtracking, avoiding stuff still falling with every aftershock, etc. There isn't likely to be even 50 feet in a straight line.

OH! Got a nail through your shoe and into your foot? Sprained your ankle? Hmmm.... your best-case scenario is deteriorating a bit, isn't it? How long is it going to take to get home NOW?

People need to realize that they can probably take the best-case disaster circumstances just fine, esp the people here at ETS.

It's the worst-case scenarios that throw you the real curves. Try something like this:
* A widespread 9.2 earthquake (Anchorage, 1964) hits your area,
* You're not at home,
* Your SO is just home from surgery,
* In the dark,
* In midwinter, with freezing rain,
* You're traveling with a co-worker (in her car) who thinks being prepared is having a double latte in the cup holder,
* One or both of you are injured,
* The car is low on gas,
* Your car just got two flat tires from debris,
* Both of you are wearing dress shoes (co-worker is wearing 4" spike heels).

Your problems just increased exponentially, didn't they?

Sue

The car is irrelevant; hardware comes and goes. The big deal is that you are willingly granting/lending this person your insurance. Regardless of the situation, you (and your insurer) are fully liable for whatever happens with your vehicle. That's the part that should utterly freak you out.

In the worst case scenario, you are obviously not able to travel, despite what you would like to do or think you are obligated to do. So many situations are worsened when people just blindly push ahead because of some "schedule" (plane flights or the like) when they really need to adjust their objectives and their plans.

If I am stuck in an earthquake zone in freeing rain, low on gas, with inadequate shoes and a skanky companion, my SO is just going to recover from surgery on her own until things improve on my end. Actually is she is home from surgery, that is pretty good. It would be worse case if she were just undergoing surgery. BTDT.

I think I end up on foot in this scenario. Carrying my GHB and as much other gear from my car as I could. Sounds like there would be many others in the same situation and what working roads there were would be congested anyway. (Now I'm looking at Chisel's "Possible Scenario".)

My $500 car isn't going to be attractive to very many people anyway, and my insurance company would probably be happier paying damages sustained while it was parked than being driven after I loaned it to someone else. If they want it, go ahead and steal it and good luck!

Okay, so if you cannot even barely walk through the downed debris, how would you think attempting to drive a vehicle would fare any better then being on foot? Given your above description, walking would be a much better option.

Here in the U.S., I understand that even if your car is stolen, the insurance company assumes you 'lent' it to the thieves, and once they pay for the damage they caused, they cancel your policy.

So if you lend it to someone, or someone steals it, it sounds like the outcome would be the same.

My point was that the freeway is more likely to be clear of the amount of debris (excepting collapsed overpasses) that the city streets would be filled with.

Sue

It's been three months since the biggie hit northern Japan. How's the travel situation there? Have they got it all tidied up and back to business as usual?

I wonder just how long your wait would be?

Sue

Who knows? A lot of variables involved. When the situations comes, I will deal with it.

Interesting question about the situation in Japan. Since we are not hearing about it, I guess (and that is the right word) that it is something like semi normal, such that urgent travel is possible. Does anyone know for sure?