Yeah, that's always in general been the recc for Big Earthquakes, but the massive subduction-zone slip (on par if not bigger than Japan's that caused the last tsunami/etc) tends to scare people in a way that previous discussions of quakes haven't, and my general sense is the sheer Can't Do Anything of it is why, especially down south where they don't have the entirety of Vancouver Island nicely in the way to break the tsunami before it does to them what theirs did to Japan.