Good luck with your house. You're lucky that it's not your primary residence.

There was an interesting two-hour special on Nova a couple weeks ago about fires. The central thesis of the show was that fires are a natural part of the U.S. western landscape and have been there, historically, right up until the U.S. decided to start fighting the fires around the turn of the century. The lack of natural fires over the past century changed the nature of our forests. Where the forest once had tall, older trees with open grass between them, they now have a larger number of younger trees and a tangle of underbrush. The density of effective fuel is significantly higher than in its primordial state because of the lack of fire. This means that, when fires do happen, they're worse now than they ever were.

This sort of thinking has led, in the last several years, to the introduction of "controlled burns" (which are quite dangerous, in and of themselves). Apparently, there's still a lot of debate among the forestry people about the best way to manage fires.

One easy conclusion is that, if you do have a house in the woods, you really want to have a big clearing around it, because fires are inescapable. (Most forest fires are started by lightning, which can happen anywhere...)