I'm not an architect and don't live in an earthquake zone, but I was under the impression that wooden homes flex in earthquakes and if and when they do fall on you, do less damage than concrete homes which are stiff up until a point and then crack and fall.

So the human surviving may come at the cost of more houses collapsing.

It absolutely happens in steel and concrete construction in earthquake loading, when loading past the smaller earthquakes.

Plastic/non-linear deformation is intended in shear panels of steel connections and the core of well confined concrete beams/columns. The idea is to provide a lot of energy damping due to the nonlinear nature of the f*D hysteresis curve. This works long enough for the earthquake to go away and the people to get out of the building, at which point, you need a new building but hopefully no one has died.

For inhabitant survival a sifficient goal is something like “remains structurally intact for ~30 minutes after the end of the earthquake”. Which is significantly leas than is required for staying habitable

Evacuation. Hardly anyone died in these fires.