What I get from this is: make your own rules
Hindsight is of little value to those who were making decisions in the moment, but really, "make your own rules during an emergency" seems like it isn't guaranteed to be effective. You're just as likely to be adding to the problem as anything.
You could have driven right into a fire or into a tangle of live power lines. You could have endangered the lives of the road crew working on the power lines, or could have caused an incident that prevented the road from being opened at all, preventing anyone from escaping that way - you don't know when or if it was going to be reopened. So possibly worse? Absolutely. And keep in mind that the "burning alive in your car" wasn't a guaranteed outcome here - many people survived.
That said, preparation is key.
> a logger’s first aid kit, a flashlight, the new Army bayonet (designed mainly as a tool), a folding shovel, and Vibram-soled boots
Note, that article is from 1990. It's a recounting of the '89 San Francisco earthquake.
[0]: https://sb.longnow.org/SB_homepage/Earthquake_Lessons.html
In general and for the society at large, what you want is order. Listen to authorities, do what they say. If everyone is in full panic mode, its very likely even more people die. By following directions and maintaining order, you increase the odds that more people survive.
For you personally? Go in full panic mode, do whatever you have to, to live. At the end of the day, no one is getting a ticket for running a police barricade. But some people that listened are literally dead.
Basically - I want everyone else to be calm and follow directions, and I want to push my way to the front and save myself.
The author looks at case studies (and some stats iirc) of a bunch of people in life-threatening situations, some who survived and others not. He looks at how they acted, gets into the psychology of why people act that way, and pulls out some lessons.
One of them was "think for yourself, don't just follow instructions." One example was 9/11, during which some people in the towers were told to just stay where they were. Some of those who ignored that instruction made it out.
Experience: Houston, from Allison to Harvey.
Staying in the path of a disaster is clearly not a good idea.
In the end if you value your private property so much that you'd risk your life you'll make bad decisions. I'm dumb but not that dumb.
There has to be some rule for spotting the inefficacy of the responders. But it's quite hard to make something that works. Even "know about the emergency and how things work around it" tends to fail often. Also, the next "obvious" one of "past performance is damn highly correlated with future performance" is so full of problems that it's completely counterproductive.