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Disaster frequency appears to be increasing. The impact of those disasters has increased substantially in terms of mortality and economic losses. Evacuation, as an inevitable part of disaster management systems, plays a critical role in disaster mitigation. The efficiency of all-hazard disaster evacuation could be increased by making appropriate decisions on policies and practices for planning, preparedness and response, and taking certain traffic operations, management and control. Common principles for large disaster evacuation have been established, mostly based on the experience of hurricane events. However, earthquakes have a series of special characteristics, which are different from other disasters, such as being hard to predict and leading to a great deal of secondary disasters. The 1994 Northridge earthquake in California and the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake in China are chosen as examples to track and compare disaster response, including evacuation effectiveness. A primary guideline for earthquake evacuation plan is developed in this study.