mellow said:Coming from someone who has had 2 chimney fires in the last 5 years the firefighters advice is dead on. If you hear a roar coming from your pipe/chimney RUN outside and see if you see thick dark smoke coming from the chimney, you will likely see flames too from the creosote. Call 911 ASAP. DO NOT try to open the fireplace, as soon as you can try and close all the air from going in the insert/woodstove. It is a good thing the fire dept is only half a mile from me, but it still took 8 minutes for them to get here. By the time they get here the chimney fire has usually died out, but the important thing is they carry a thermal scanner and can check to make sure you don't have any hot spots left in the chimney. After the 2nd chimney fire I had a professional chimney cleaner come and found out why I was having the fires, then I bought a liner and found this website I always have a good size fire extinguisher within 10ft of the insert.
Move that extinguisher back a ways. If it gets hot and explodes it will make your chimney fires look like a spring picknic. Keep extinguishers near the exits to the house. They don't do anything for you back in the middle of the fire. Well, except spray shrapnel.