Even though the fact of the potential for a high magnitude earthquake is well known absolutely no one (including myself) is prepared for it at all. I've certainly been meaning to fashion myself a "bug out bag" in case of a disaster but haven't gotten around to it...
Vancouver also has a liquefaction concern. The false creek flats area is filled in estuary/marsh and though it's largely industrial there are plans to move Emily Carr School of Art to that area. I live pretty close to it so I have no idea how affected I am. Even worse is the entire nearby suburb of Richmond (pop 175k) is built on an island of silt in the Fraser River and is probably pretty much entirely a liquefaction zone.
http://faculty.washington.edu/allstadt/Kates_website/Seattle...
TL;DR - major landslides
Here's a video of an "underwater forest" discovered by some divers in Lake Washington, seemingly caused by a previous landslide: http://vimeo.com/35477614
Not sure what to say about all those houses in the west hills besides good luck...
http://www.portlandmercury.com/portland/the-first-four-minut...
I moved back from Japan just a few months before the 2011 disaster.
They're all stocked up on organic, locally sourced emergency supplies, then?
Sorry, I couldn't resist. Worth the karma damage.
A large tsunami would be quite damaging lot of smaller coastal cities along the western coast, though. It's a major concern, at any rate.
Downtown Seattle is also built on a mudflat that caused countless problems in early Seattle history. Areas built on mudflats will be hit especially hard in an earthquake.
The San Andreas is a strike-slip system. It's not capable of generating very large (magnitude 8 or greater) earthquakes.
The Cascadia subduction zone has had magnitude 9 earthquakes in the past. The last one was on Jan. 26th, 1700. (Thank Japan for having excellent historical records of earthquakes and tsunamis. We know a large earthquake occurred around 300 years ago in the area, and thanks to Japan's record of the tsunami it caused, we can make a solid link to the exact date.)
We don't know the statistical hazard as well due to the small sample size, but when the next large Cascadia earthquake occurs the damage will be absolutely catastrophic.
It's not just the direct earthquake damage, but also the tsunami hazard. You need vertical offset to cause a tsunami. A strike-slip system like the San Andreas is very unlikely to cause a tsunami. The permanent offset is dominantly horizontal, so the only way to generate a tsunami is through secondary effects such as landslides. (Also, most of the length of the San Andreas is onshore.)
Subduction zones are thrust systems. One plate moves up, and the other moves down. Earthquakes there are likely to produce permanent vertical deformation at the surface.
Furthermore, certain types of subduction zones are more prone to generating large tsunamis. A deep earthquake is unlikely to cause much deformation at the seafloor, and therefore doesn't generate as large of a tsunami. However, the shallower the rupture penetrates, the larger the deformation at the seafloor is, and therefore the larger the tsunami is. Certain types of subduction zones are more prone to having large earthquakes that rupture all the way up to the seafloor. (The amount of sediment on top of the incoming oceanic plate is thought to play a large role in this, among other things. The recent Tonankai earthquake in northern Japan turned a lot of what we thought we knew about this on its head, though.)
The Cascadia subduction zone is one of the end-member types that's likely to have both large earthquakes and large tsunamis. We know it has in the past, and it's likely to in the future. It's unusual in that most of the deformation along the fault occurs through periodic creep ("slow-slip events") that doesn't cause an earthquake. (Actually, as we're finding out, it's not that unusual around the world, but it was first observed and is best documented in Cascadia.) However, while this creep does relieve a significant portion of the accumulated elastic strain, it doesn't relieve all of it. The plate boundary fault is still accumulating elastic strain that will eventually be released in a large earthquake.
At any rate, just something to think about. The seismic hazard in the Bay Area can be reduced through proper engineering solutions. (Though SOMA is going to be in very rough shape for the reasons this article mentions. Lesson for next time: Don't bulldoze all the rubble into a pile and then build on top of it!)
For Cascadia, though, you can't engineer your way around a magnitude 9 earthquake and tsunami. You do the best you can, and try to avoid putting critical infrastructure near the coast.