Any thoughts?

Stay home.

Seriously, one should not project all kinds of what ifs unless one enjoys
paranoia.

I kill the breaker to the hot water heater and shut off the main water
supply.


Yep!

I do a "rural" variation of this: I shut off the power to the water heater
and also the power to the deep well pump.

If the "worse" happens, the total amount of water dumped would be less that
100 gallons and most of that would not do that much damage but simply run
out the basement back door.

If you have "city" water and the main shut off works OK, then after the
shutoff valve is close, you just relieve the residual pressure by opening a
tap for a few seconds.