Agreed.
My nephews house burnt down a couple of years ago.. it was a new (<2 yrs old) house with a wood porch on the front . Like all these vinyl sided houses, there was a protected outlet on the front of the house that was easily accessed on the porch.
His wife smoked, but never in the house. On the porch. She had a coffee can she put her ciggys in when she was done. This was right beside the outlet.
Our belief is a ciggy between the siding and deck boards started the fire.
Fire chief of the volunteer fire dept blamed it on the outlet. The deck, and the coffee can were gone naturally, but burn patterns led to that area. No one mentioned she smoked...
I had a friend with a house fire- smoke damage throughout of course but the burn/water damage all in the fireplace area. This guy primarily heated his house with that fireplace (wood burning old masonry type built in 1970's). Of course rumors were it must been caused by the fireplace, but the firebox and masonry were still in sound condition. I wasn't allowed in until after State Fire marshal did his investigation. He only told them the fire started at a location off to the one side of the fireplace, and that is where most the wood framing was gone or nearly gone compared to other areas - makes sense it likely did start there. He never gave any specific cause otherwise. There was copper wires, NM with all covering burned off but that to be expected whether they contributed to starting the fire or not, metallic remains of receptacles, switches, etc. in the area, some disturbed by firefighters so you don't necessarily know where they originally were located.
I asked my friend for details of where there originally was switches, receptacles, etc. and what was plugged in or in use at the time. There was a receptacle about the location where fire supposedly started. From the remains we found what was likely the metal contacts of that receptacle but have no idea if it was installed in a proper device box - if plastic it possibly could been consumed in the fire though. He said there was nothing plugged into it. The blower on the fireplace would have been only thing in the area that was in use. There was enough disturbed by firefighters that it was difficult to determine where it connected to, but a good possibility was it fed through the receptacle where the fire likely started. My conclusion though I wouldn't say was definitely the cause was there was likely "backstabbed" connections on this receptacle that supplied this blower and that they likely experienced "glowing connection" situation and it must have somehow ignited something to get this fire going. When we replaced other receptacles in the cleanup and restoration many them were "backstab" connected, and the house was around 30-35 years old at the time. Perfect age for such things to fail like that. Fireplace blower probably was somewhat low level load, but it don't take a big load to develop such heating at a connection, especially on something that runs continuously or almost continuously.
