Um, wouldn't the heat from the fire then turn the house into an oven? Everything not made of stone inside the house would be incinerated. Any framing timbers would be incinerated. The glass would still break or melt. Any plastic parts, and there's a lot of plastic & vinyl in a house these days (like wire insulation), would be incinerated.

I'm not saying it's a bad idea, I'm just pointing out that there is more to a house than four walls and a roof.

Not everyone would want to live in an adobe house. If people wanted a more convential looking house, it'd cost a lot. The house would probably be the biggest loss ($-wise) anyway, and if your stuff was insured, you'd be back on your feet a lot quicker.

A realistic scenerio is that the house wont be set ablaze by burning embers or shrubs close to it. Yes there will be combustibles inside, but the structure wouldn't burn to the ground and rebuilding would be a lot less expensive, same goes for tornadoes, hurricanes and earthquakes, if you want to see a home that is survivable go to http:dehsigner.tripod.com/It sure is an improvement on a tender box, but of course we have been building stick framed post and beam boxes for hundreds of years, why should we change now? survivability....maybe, and if you could cut your energy bills to 1/3 of what you presently pay...that might be an incentative.

A masonry or adobe fire-proof house is certainly achievable, and you could have a fireproof facade on the outside to make it look like any kind of house. The problem here would be getting builders, who are highly political, to accept the construction method.

Incidentally, stiff-walled houses - brick, blocks, etc, react differently to earthquakes, because they don't have the flexibility of a wooden house. This would be an issue in California.

"tin" metal roofs and shutters are a way, to provide effective burning time to keep a house from going up. Lawn sprinkler systems installed at the roofline would add significant fire protection from wayward overheating. Masonry in earthquake areas is not the way - and many alternative fireproofing technologies like tin or stucco can be fixed to a timber frame structure to offer 1 hour intense fireproofing. Shutters need to be present to cover glass that breaks when exposed to intense fire - and roofline/soffit boarding needs to be in metal aswell.

I've always been a fan of concrete-inflation dome homes.

http://www.monolithic.com/

I imagine these are hard to start on fire, tough in an earthquake or tornado or hurricane and they're the most efficient homes you can get.

After the California wildfires, I wondered why Southern Californias' building codes were not updated. However, I also belive that if you are going to live in an earthquake/fire prone desert you should live in a house designed for the problem. Having said that the only one designed for the problem is a concrete re-enforced box, and some people have built them. This box would also have to include the roof, but I am sure you could put a steel framed roof with steel panels over it. Or maybe steel framed homes with concrete board screwed to the outside and fire resistant insulation in the pockets of the walls with wiring running through insulated conduit and insulated steel shutters for windows and doors for firestorms.