Well there are many different types of fires, and what may be the most likely to occur in one area, may not be an issue in another.
Here in Maine we seldom get wildfires, but on my hill alone, out of (6) houses, (5) have burned, and all of them from woodstoves. And what we found on the Fire Department was, the houses with metal roofs faired the worst. That was unlike asphalt roofs, with steel roofs, we could not get water onto the fire. All our streams of water did was cool the steel, while underneath the fire raged, built up heat and rolled across the attic or upper floors. Now I am not advocating asphalt roofs, in fact I have strongly recommended metal roofs for years because any old barn that is still standing, most likely has a metal roof on it because steel is just impervious to water for years and years. And today, metal roofs are cheaper than asphalt roofs for some crazy reason.
Interestinly
enough, all three of my houses have cedar shingles or clapboards allowed to weather to a gray on their own, a look I prefer because it keeps me from having chipped or curled paint to scrape and replace, but again wildfire is not an issue here. I do like your idea of a slate roof, but boy they are expensive roofs!
Fire provention thus for me is ensuring my electrical service is good, meaning GFCI's on the start of every circuit, arc fault circuit breakers, adequate grounding, and 12 guage wire instead of 14 for most outlet and lightining runs. Obviously I go one guage higher on appliances with higher electrical loads. I even have a green switch installed on my current resided house so that when we leave the home, 90% of the electricity is shut down in the house. This is all in an effort to reduce electrical fires, a leading cause of home fires.
As for a woodstove, I have them as this is Maine and it gets cold, but my "woodstoves" are all wood/coal stoves actually, and I burn coal almost exclusively, simply because you cannot have a chimney fire burning anthrcite coal (hard coal and not soft coal). Because it is an intense, radiant heat, I heat my house nicely, but my chances of having a "woodstove" fire are almost reduced to nothing. Even when I do burn
firewood, I brush my chimney every three weeks, and make sure when building a chimney, I can clean it with a brush without going on the roof so I am more apt to clean it often.
The only other real diligence is working on stuff in my barn or outside so that if a small engine backfires or something, a fire will not be started in the attached garage. This goes along with
gasoline storage, and other flammables.
I am not perfect, but since I own the ONLY house on this hill that has not had a fire, not only am I motivated to keep doing so due to statistics, but it seems to be working.
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