In the recent earthquake in the city of Bam in Iran thousands of people died in adobe houses.

When you are preparing for natural disasters there is nothing like a properly built single storey precast concrete building.

There are domed buildings more than thousand years old in Istanbul that withstood earthquakes, but it should never be forgotten that those buildings are masterpieces of architecture (for example Hagia Sophia), not regular buildings. I have seen small domed buildings like mosques or chapels, baths etc. come down easily. Last year a very minor earthquake took an adobe house down any killed the family in it.

Burak