I walked around Los Gatos after the quake and talked to a few people with houses under repair. Most of the work cost less than the deductible; I didn't meet anyone who mentioned EQ insurance.
With wood-frame houses the biggest problem was coming off the foundation; some had cripple walls that collapsed and dropped the whole structure several feet, but the main structure of the houses never collapsed. The repairs were similar to foundation replacement: jack the whole structure back up onto cribbing and rebuild the foundation and cripples in a seismically sensible way. That's maybe a $100k job but not $500k.