How far do you need to go? I've always thought of earthquakes as fairly localized events: moving a dozen miles in stage 1 evac - in the right direction! - should get you out of the path of initial fires started by the earthquake, and another dozen miles out of any later after-affect fires, etc, and from there it's mainly a matter of getting far enough away to be get able to get supplies (gas, food, lodging) normally & wait for the the OK to return.
There are problems. Unlike Texas, I basically have only one escape route: south. I live on a peninsula:
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&sour...mp;t=h&z=11The San Andreas fault is just to the west of 280 on that map, and I live near 101. 101 is crossed by overpasses, so getting a dozen miles is a problem if there are collapses of overpasses. 92 could get me west if it's overpasses haven't collapsed onto the city streets below it. Going over the San Mateo Bridge to the East Bay would be a scary thought after a major quake, even if the bridge is still standing. The city streets have over and underpasses from east/west highways and the north/south train and freeways. Think if trying to get out of New Orleans.
We have a cargo van with a month's worth of stuff in it, and my hope is that we can drive south or north out of a fire's path, but with broken gas mains and fires, you never can tell, given the number of over and under passes in our area (including the train tracks that serve San Francisco from all points south). But basically our goal is to shelter in place for a month and hope that we can be evacuated during that time - think New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. ("Wait for the OK to return"? Think again of Katrina. If our town is leveled by fire or quake, I don't bet on it ever being restored to its former glory.)
Our issue is that we don't have a 360-degree evacuation zone. It's one degree - south. Having a Mad Max vehicle that can drive over a collapsed structure is a nice daydream, though.
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