Afterthoughts...
If there is a mundane explanation for these strange fire deaths, then they must occur worldwide... anywhere someone deals with fire. So why don’t I have cases from Africa, South America, China, Japan, India, and so on? There are basically three possible arguments.
Argument #1: the strange deaths simply don’t happen in these places. While this sounds like a straight-forward answer, it comes with an interesting implication. If the deaths are not evenly distributed worldwide based on use of fire, then it implies that some form of higher combustibility must exist in the areas where the events are occurring, either due to a difference in the people’s bodies or the environment they inhabit. While this could be taken as statistical proof of preternatural combustibility, it might also simply prove that people in the United States and Europe are far less careful in how they handle fire.
Argument #2: the people studying the strange fire deaths have simply never looked for deaths in the other countries, possibly because of a language barrier... in short, if you don’t speak or read Chinese, you don’t know if there have been any strange deaths in China. We need some foreign researchers!
Argument #3: the deaths are simply not thought of as strange and therefore not fussed over or reported. If the strange fire deaths are considered to be normal fire deaths in a place, there would be no reason to report it. Remember, until Paul Rolli claimed there was a connection and listed criteria for identifying the strange fire deaths, there was no concentrated effort to look for them... but the deaths were still occurring, whether or not they were noted. So maybe we just need some foreign researchers! (Did I say that already?)

-- Garth Haslam
2/2/2011