absurdity of a mindless technology is exemplified in Bradbury's futuristic fantasy as, although

...the gods had gone away,...the ritual of the religion continued senselessly, uselessly.

The front door opens for a radiated dog who enters and dies. Voices sing the time, the nursery turns itself on to create various virtual realities for no one, the bath fills, the dinner is prepared, and a cozy fire is set on the hearth. Even when no human voice responds to the automated address from the study ceiling that asks Mrs. McClellan which poem she wishes to hear this night, the programmed automaton chooses, in unconscious irony, Sara Teasdale's poem, "There Will Come Soft Rains."

For rain is precisely what the house soon needs as a strong wind rips loose a tree branch that crashes through a window. The shattered glass falls and the subsequent gusts of wind knock over a bottle of cleaning solvent, which shatters over the stove. "The room was ablaze in an instant!" and the "house tried to save itself" by turning on all the sprinklers and shutting all the doors. But the fierce wind blows and its oxygen feeds the fire. Then, automated "water rats" squirt water all about, racing back into the walls in order to refuel and then squirt some more. However, the "mechanical rain" and various fire-fighting chemicals are no match for their indomitable adversary, Nature, as the fire eventually consumes the entire house. Finally, the destruction of both humanity and technology is complete.  

As the previous educators have noted, the house is destroyed by a fire after a tree branch goes through the kitchen window, knocking a bottle of cleaning solvent onto the stovetop.

What is really interesting about this description is how Bradbury humanizes the process. The death of the house follows a pattern that is similar to the death of a human body. When the fire reaches the attic, for example, Bradbury describes how the pumps are “shattered” into pieces. The description is reminiscent of the way that a skull might break, with the bone smashing into pieces.

From the attic, the fire moves from room to room, beginning with the upstairs bedrooms. This is a methodical process, just as a fire would move down each section of the human body.

To really emphasize the comparison between the death of a house and the death of a body, Bradbury talks about how the house shudders and how its “bared skeleton” is impacted by the heat:

Its wire, its nerves revealed as if a surgeon had torn the skin off to let the red veins and capillaries quiver in the scalded air.

This medical metaphor is also suggestive of what happened to the former residents of the house who died in the nuclear blast. This is, therefore, a way of highlighting the horrors of nuclear war without explicitly describing the gory deaths of these people.

Returning to the house, when the fire is finally over, only one wall remains, much like the two-dimensional shapes of people that were left behind by the blast. Thus, Bradbury uses the demise of the house to warn us against the use of nuclear weapons.

At the end of Ray Bradbury's "There Will Come Soft Rains," the automated house is destroyed by a fire. This fire begins at night, when a tree branch shatters the kitchen window, breaking and spilling a bottle of cleaning solvent on the stove.

Immediately, the house is described fighting the fire to the best of its capabilities, but the fire spreads too rapidly, overwhelming its defenses. The fire is described moving "from room to room and then up the stairs." Eventually, it spreads upwards into the attic where it sets of an explosion. In the end, the house is shown collapsing inwards on itself:

The crash. The attic smashing into the kitchen and parlor. The parlor into cellar, cellar into sub-cellar. Deep freeze, armchair, film tapes, circuits, beds, and all like skeletons thrown in a cluttered mound down under.

Bradbury concludes this story with an image in which all that is left at the house is one wall still standing in the wreckage.

In this moment, this last remnant of human technology has been destroyed, just like the people who built it. If you were to blame the fire for the house's destruction, you might consider the destruction of the human species to be a factor in the demise as well. After all, part of the reason the house was destroyed was that, lacking the resources of civilization that could have assisted its defense, the house's defenses were overwhelmed. In a world where humanity remained a presence, this particular struggle between technology and a force of nature could have easily had a different result.

The house in this story dies because of a fire that it can't successfully put out. Readers are told that at ten o'clock the house began going through its final moments. The wind blowing outside the house is strong enough to knock down a tree branch, and the branch crashes through the kitchen window. For some reason, a bottle of cleaning solvent was close enough to the stove that the the tree branch and crashed window also knocked the bottle over. Cleaning solvent was splashed all over the stove and ignited. The house immediately springs into action, and begins trying to fight the growing fire.

"Fire!" screamed a voice. The house lights flashed, water pumps shot water from the ceilings.

The house does everything right. It shuts doors to minimize oxygen to the fire, and it sprays it with water; however, the blaze is simply too great. Too many windows have already been broken by the wind and heat. Eventually, the house runs its water supplies completely dry, and then there is simply very little hope for the house—yet, the house still continues to valiantly fight.

And then, reinforcements. From attic trapdoors, blind robot faces peered down with faucet mouths gushing green chemical.

Unfortunately, the fire is too "clever" for the house, and the house is eventually so burned and weakened that it collapses down on itself until nothing is left but a charred pile of rubble.

The crash. The attic smashing into kitchen and parlour. The parlour into cellar, cellar into sub-cellar. Deep freeze, armchair, film tapes, circuits, beds, and all like skeletons thrown in a cluttered mound deep under.

On the simplest and most literal level, the house in "There Will Come Soft Rains" is finally destroyed by a fire caused by an accident. A wind knocked down a tree branch. It fell through a window and knocked over a bottle of cleaner. The contents fell on a stove, and a fire started.

The fire spread quickly. The house's automated systems fought the fire. They shut doors, to contain the fire and cut off its air supply...but windows were broken, and so the fire kept spreading. The system's robots sprayed it with water...but the house's reserves hadn't been refilled, and so they ran out, and the fire kept spreading. The robots sprayed chemicals inside the house, to extinguish the flames...but the fire had spread outside the house, and it kept spreading, until everything was reduced to a pile of ashes.

On a larger level, the house was destroyed by entropy. All systems break down. Disorder always spreads.

Bradbury's futuristic short story, "There Will Come Soft Rains," presents a world in which the quotidian humanity has been removed.  For, it is the technologically-advanced house that expresses human action. Examples of this assumed humanity that characterizes the machinery of the house are evident throughout the narrative.  The "voice-clock sang,"  the garage "lifted its door," the tiny robot mice "darted," and "thudded against chairs," "popped into their burrows" where their "pink electric eyes faded."

Outside, the charred figures of the residents of the house have their images burned into wood, revealing their last actions.  The boy and girl were playing ball, the mother picking flowers.  They are nothing but shadow of themselves, just as they have been mere shadows of human beings when alive.  It is, after all, the house that is the person:

It quivered at each sound, the house did....

[When the house catches fire]  The house tried to save itself....The house gave ground as the fire in ten billion angry sparks moved ....

The house shuddered, oak bone on bone, its bared skeleton cringing from the heat, its wire, its nerves revealed as if a surgeon had torn the skin off to let the red veins and capillaries quiver in the scalded air.  Help, help!...And the voices wailed Fire, fire, run, run, ....And the voices fading as the wires popped their sheathings like hot chestnuts.

Clearly, it is the house that has assumed human qualities while the humans have been subsumed into the technological world of Bradbury's narrative.

What a great question.  We can infer many things from the story.  The house is almost all electronic; everything is done for the inhabitants, and one of the saddest aspects of the story is the way the house continues to "live" and make meals, clean, etc., long after the inhabitants have died from the nuclear bomb.  So we know that they were affluent and benefited from many labor-saving devices.  We know that the house even read poems electronically to at least one of the member of the family.

The poem that is read is Sara Teasdale's "There Will Come Soft Rains" (the source of the story's title).  This tells us that the woman who listens to the poem enjoys poetry--but we must ask ourselves if she really understands what she's been reading. Implicit in the Teasdale poem is a warning that everything will continue when humankind is gone.  This, ironically, is exactly what happens in the story; however, instead of "nature" continuing as in the Teasdale poem, the house's automatic devices go on until the raging fire destroys the house itself.

Prior to the fire we also see the spots from the instant nuclear devastation that let us know the family was reasonably happy--playing ball outside with the dog.  But their happiness may be seen as a kind of complacency since they were unaware of the danger of nuclear war. We must ask ourselves is having all the labor-saving devices, living in a beautiful modern home, and having a happy family life is truly enough to live a good life.  Their lives were snatched away from them, possibly because of their ignorance and complacency in the face of the nuclear threat.

The main house in "There Will Come Soft Rains" is the last functioning home in the city after a nuclear war.  This is evidenced both by the absence of people and by the revelation, at ten-fifteen, of silhouettes left in the charcoal dust on the side of the house.  At last, due to a storm, fire breaks out and consumes the house as there is no one left to fight the blaze.

In the final hours of the house's "life" it prepares itself for the evening with cards and cocktails. It has operated as if the family were there all day long. As the house sits and waits for the cards to be played and the drinks to be drunk a wind outside blows a liquor bottle over and the inside the house a fire starts. The mice who clean up messes scurry out to help and the faucets try to douse the flames, but the house begins to die and finally all there is that is left is silence and smoke. 

See the eNotes link below for a summary of events.  

The setting described in the poem There Will Come Soft Rains suggests that the world will go on, much the same as it is now, even if mankind were to perish or destroy itself (in war, for example). "Soft rains," "the smell of the ground," "swallows circling," and "frogs in the pools" will continue to sing and make the various and vibrant sounds of life. The colors, fragrances, and sounds of the Earth will continue, regardless of man's presence or absence on this planet. The setting suggests, in other words, that human beings are not essential to life on planet earth. It suggests that we humans have an inflated sense of our importance; that we are not so central as we believe ourselves to be. That is why the speaker says "neither bird nor tree" would know or care "if mankind perished utterly." The seasons would continue to come and go; the rhythms of the planet (and the beauty and diversity of her life forms) do not depend on require interference, or even the existence of humans at all. 

Bradbury begins the short story "There Will Come Soft Rains" by offering a vivid description of a technologically advanced smart-home as the house automatically performs its daily functions. While the house cooks and cleans itself, it becomes obvious that the home is completely empty and readers begin to wonder where the family has gone. Bradbury then describes the environment outside of the home by writing,

"The house stood alone in a city of rubble and ashes. This was the one house left standing. At night the ruined city gave off a radioactive glow which could be seen for miles" (1).

Astute readers can infer that the family has died in a nuclear explosion. The "radioactive glow" is a telling piece of evidence that indicates a nuclear explosion has taken place and destroyed the city. Initially, it is not clear whether or not the family died during the explosion or from the deadly radioactivity. In the next paragraph, Bradbury writes,

"The entire west face of the house was black, save for five places. Here the silhouette in paint of a man mowing a lawn. Here, as in a photograph, a woman bent to pick flowers. Still farther over, their images burned on wood in one titanic instant, a small boy, hands flung into the air; higher up, the image of a thrown ball, and opposite him a girl, hands raised to catch a ball which never came down" (2).

The silhouettes of the family reveal that they were outside, enjoying the day during the nuclear attack. The blast was so powerful that it immediately killed them, leaving their silhouettes burnt onto the side of the home.