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The power grid can't be shut down in a few hours.

One of my college friends who works for PG&E said "The faster you turn off the grid the longer it will take to turn it on."

He had some great stories about contingency plans that go into how they would restart the grid post 9.0 quake in SF or LA. Such a quake is largely expected to bring down most, if not all, of California's grid.

The strike slip nature of the San Andreas Fault zone in California precludes really big earthquakes. USGS thinks a 8.2 or 8.3 is about as big as they could get. The biggest historical California earthquakes have reached 7.9 in magnitude. (http://www.conservation.ca.gov/index/Earthquakes/Pages/qh_ea...)

However Northern California could see a Mag 9.0+ quake from the cascadia fault.

The mean advance warning time would be ~3 days, it says.

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