Keep the design of your roof uncomplicated using a simple hip or straight gable roof. Roofs with intersecting planes and valleys are architecturally smart looking, but they form dead air pockets and eddy currents that help fan the flames of a fire.

Tempered glass, which costs 50 percent more than regular glass, is even more resistant to high heat. It's the glass used in patio doors and in front of fireplaces, for good reason. Tempered glass will stay in place and intact throughout many fires.

Add low emissivity (Low-E) coating and your glass is even more fire resistant. Low-E film will reflect infrared and ultra violet light -- heat rays. In a wildland fire it helps stop the radiant energy transfer to combustible materials that are behind the glass such as drapes or wood furniture and walls. Tempered glass with Low-E coating will stay intact and it will transfer less radiant energy to combustibles behind it.

Glass block is another option, provided you don't mind losing your view. Use it where only daylighting is needed, view is not a factor, and the window faces a very high fire hazard.

Don't overlook shutters -- yes, metal ones.

Shutters, real shutters that swing into play, not decorative shutters, can add another 10 to 20 minutes of protection to a window -- all that may be necessary for a window to survive a fire.

Metal shutters can protect a window even longer and they will not ignite. You will, however, have to swing them shut in a timely manner, should a fire approach.

Like roofing materials, doors are also fire-rated. Solid wood doors are stronger than hollow ones. Metal doors are best. In any case, a good fire resistant door requires adequate weather stripping so that the seal prevents hot gasses or burning embers from entering the building.

The use of metals only sounds like battening down the hatch. You don't always have to give up form for function. Metal materials can be embossed and designed to look like wood.

Decks are common in many panoramic regions, but the irony is the panorama -- often ranges of towering, and potentially explosive evergreens -- is what heightens the fire hazard. To begin, most decks are highly combustible structures. They trap heat and hot gasses and they often face downhill (to take in an unobstructed view) towards a fire's approach and effectively and openly invite the fire into the home. Decks also are built perfectly to burn, much in the same way you would stack wood in a fireplace. Adding fuel to the fire, the components of a deck, joists, decking and railings, are made of only two-inch-thick wood giving the structure the high surface-to-volume ratio fires quickly devour.

Keep a deck built with fire resistant materials and create barriers by closing in the deck, screen vents, eaves and crawl spaces to ward off burning embers. You can also isolate the deck from the fuels and fire by building a noncombustible patio and wall below it. The patio prevents combustible materials from getting below the deck. The wall helps shield the deck from both the radiant and convective energy of the fire.