His company also had practiced through the years about how to route gas around leaks and problem areas. A benefit to Salt Lake Valley, he said, is that Questar has seven different "gateways" to the valley for natural gas supplies through different pipelines, offering flexibility to help route around problems.

One of the bigger concerns Questar had — which turned out to be valid for the 2008 quake — is that people would automatically run to shut off gas to their homes after the quake. People should do that only if they smell gas, hear it leaking, have significant structural damage or have a fire.

"In the San Francisco earthquake (in 1989), 166,000 customers shut off their gas — and only 2 percent of them needed to. That left a lot of people without gas for weeks," Shepherd said.

That's because turning gas back on should be done by the gas company, a heating contractor or a plumber, and in a disaster when companies are busy with bigger problems, that takes time.

Utah's 2008 quake occurred on a freezing, snowy February day. So people who turned off gas without needing to left themselves without heat for a long time.

The other concern Questar had — which again turned out to be valid — was that hot water heaters could cause problems if they were not anchored well. Severe ground shaking indeed tipped over many, breaking both gas and water lines and igniting dozens of fires.

Shepherd in 2006 urged residents to ensure that hot water heaters were secured to walls or anchored well. He also said having an adjustable wrench handy is a good idea in case true leaks or damage required shutting off gas after a quake.

Communications

State predictions in 2006 also did not specifically guess how much telephone service might be knocked out by the quake, but officials estimated it would be significant — and that much cell phone service would also be knocked out because of damage to towers or loss of power to networks.

Robert Shroder, lead disaster preparedness official for Qwest, said his company held exercises annually for years on how to handle such disasters, and the company took many preparatory steps to help reduce any damage and allow quick recovery.

For example, key equipment was anchored and reinforced to help it survive quakes, and central offices also were built to be earthquake-resistant. For loss of power, the company had emergency generators available plus back-up battery power.

He said that immediately after such a big disaster, teams would be brought in from other states to help make repairs.

But because communication could be difficult in disasters, emergency preparedness officials had long urged residents to develop a family plan on where they might meet if they could not get messages to each other.

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E-mail: lee@desnews.com

WEDNESDAY: How Community Emergency Response Teams (CERTs) and family preparedness help in the disaster.