Where I live, there's not much drought, so forest fire's rarely happen. None that I can remember. House fires are usually caused by indoor carelessness or faulty wires.
My firepit is well contained, so I never had a problem. (Knock on wood) When I was younger though, I'd go to bonfires in the woods that would get pretty big. Sometimes 20 or 30 feet. We used to see how big we could get them, until the cops showed up one night. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/eek.gif After that, no more big fires in the woods. We sometimes would sneak in a build small ones though. Never did get caught. I think the cops didn't mind us in there, they just didn't want us building mombo fires.
Ha, the fun of being a kid. Brings back a lot of memories.