I remember as kids we had a fire in the woods behind the mall one winter day and a kid threw a closed can (pop, beer, can't remember) in the fire. We all backed off. After a while--BOOM--then hot embers shot all over the place and down the slope. We ran around like a bunch of chickens with their heads cut off, stamping out embers. Other side of woods was wealthy housing development. We didn't want a conflagration.
As for trees falling, we used to go in the woods and find big rotten trees, like 20-30 inch diameter, and two or three of us would begin pushing on it getting it to sway rythmically until eventually we would hear a cracking noise, then a few more pushes and....TIMBERrrrrrrrrrrr! CRASH. Once my buddy almost got clobbered by a rotten branch piece that fell down near us.
Closest I came to the flame thing, my buddy took me in his garage, pulled out a paint spray can, lit a match, said watch this, and hosed the paint through the flame. Made a neat torch effect, but probably extremely dangerous.
