Yep, most of us don’t think much about earthquakes like California people do. I used to travel all over the country for work and still remember the first trip to California. I happened to glance at the placard on the inside of the hotel room door and the first line was “In Case of an Earthquake”. It was like, oh yeah your in California now. A little unsettling to say the least for someone who had never been near an earthquake.

I’ve experienced many earth quakes. Hollywood has done a good job of exaggerating. Generally we in earth quake prone areas sleep thru most. Usually it’s a matter of “Did you feel that?”. Followed by “ya. It’s an earth quake, go back to sleep”.
Of course every 90 to 100 years we get one that really shakes things up. Electricity off for days. One badly maintained freeway collapsed. Lots of problems. Punks feel powerless. So more than usual numbers of sexual assault/rape. Good idea to be prepared. You don’t realize how dark it is at night. When you live in the city, street lights keep the night lit. But after a big earth quake there are no street lights. I have night lights that come on automatically if electricity goes out. And I purchased flameless candles which stay on for six hours. I stagger them. So there is an ongoing prep. I have back up sets and batteries. And I have flashlights all over the house. Plus lamps.

I stayed in Sunami territory for a year. At first I slept with my clothes and shoes on. So I could run up the hill to where the life preservers are. If you are really worried, I would buy a life preserver for each member of the family. Some kind of head protection might not hurt. I hope this helps.