in the years ive worked at ESW i have never , not once taken a call from a customer who had a chimney fire in his epa stove. not saying that it isnt possible or cannot happen , but i personally in the thousands of calls ive fielded have never discussed one with an owner of an EPA englander stove, or any other esw stove for that matter.
if these fires are on the rise as posted, the upturn in woodburning , is part , also folks getting into woodburning the wrong way is a likely reason. its amazing what folks will do and think they can get away with it. ive seen pictures of inserts sitting on a wood floor!, pipes out windows, run along rafters or basement floor joists and out , below peak terminations, even had a guy who worked for the highway dept , who got a section of metal corrugated pipe like you put under your driveway and stood it up , torched a hole in it and plumbed a woodstove through his wall into the pipe! uninsulated , freestanding about 2 ft away from the wall outside. now he didnt get a chimney fire , but he may as well had a fan at the top of that pipe blowing down for all the good it did him , said it was downdrafting so hard it kept blowing out his matches when he went to light the paper in the firebox. finally he got a plumbers torch and proceeded to smoke his house up quite heavily. then tried to blame the stove! ive got a picture of it somewhere, its quite funny, but its paper, and im not sure where it is , if i ever find it i'll post it in the "darwin" section