Decades ago I lived in an old Victorian in SF and my landlord set fire to the building while trying to strip exterior paint with a blowtorch. He had packed up and gone home but the flame had gotten under the gingerbread trim and smoldered until the middle of the night when we woke up to the smell of smoke.
We were already awake because my then baby son was a lousy sleeper and kept waking up at night. In this case, we were lucky that he did. Called SFFD and the landlord and they came and ripped off the gingerbread and put out the fire. But the fire actually started up again about 12 hours later the next day so we called again and that time they were successful.
Putting out these DIY wood fires isn’t easy!
Some of those old houses had cork insulation in the walls. Is very hard to put out.