> and made of wood

Which works great in earthquakes in my experience in Christchurch. Most homes in New Zealand are made of wood.

Christchurch had a 7.1 that was 40km away, that caused some damage (certainly the wooden house I was living in at the time was fine).

Christchurch then had a 6.2 which damaged many concrete and brick buildings because the epicentre was shallow and within the city (6.2 sounds small but if it is close then that really matters). Many house foundations were completely stuffed, but the wooden houses above were often relatively unscathed. I bought a damaged house cheaply with a broken ring foundation: "as-is" or uninsured or insurance payout are the keywords.

Christchurch had maybe 180000 homes, of which about 10,000 were ultimately demolished. But they mostly weren't demolished because the wooden home itself had failed. The majority of demolished homes were in red-zones beside the river or estuary, which the houses could have been repaired but the ground was not good and also future flood risk was the problem. The government, the city, and insurers worked together to remove a lot of homes that had other risks.

Yes, but the situation got a lot better and a lot worse...

Sadly there has been a bunch of pretty devastating earthquakes in recent years. In particular in Kumamoto the one in 2016 (magnitude 6.5) was huge and many of the houses built at lower standard or not in great shape anymore got partially or totally wrecked. Right now the house that are left are relatively well built.

The bad news is, that still doesn't help as the cumulative damage can still bring them down, and they're still subject to landslides, water damage, and other second order disastrous events.

Earthquakes didn't start in 1991. The Japanese have always had to live with earthquakes and build accordingly.

One of the reasons Japan uses wood for construction is that combined with their traditional building techniques it results in earthquake resistant buildings.