That's the same problem in the South East with tornadoes. They happen nearly every week (in summer) and can destroy neighborhoods. Yet we build lightweight framed houses and rely on insurance because the overall odds are low.
Though we are talking many, many orders of magnitude less damage from tornadoes in the Southeast when compared with California forrest fires. My state gets an average of 20 per year, and almost all of these hit uninhabited areas. If a tornado destroys four houses, it makes state news.
It’s possible to build a home on the beach to even withstand a catastrophic hurricane, but at possibly double the construction cost.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/14/us/hurricane-michael-flor...
I recall after there were bad fires in the Everglades many years ago there had been some work to build a foam that could be sprayed on a home to protect it in advance of an approaching fire. I think the person who came up with the idea was inspired by the amount of liquid diapers can hold. I wonder what came of that.
Edit: http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2006/jul/19/gel-inspired-by...
It's absolutely possible to build solid safe housing from most natural disasters, but it costs money, and often a lot of it.
https://repository.law.umich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article...