Sefer HaChinuch ספר החינוך

The commandment on the court to judge damages from fire: To judge and obligate one who has damaged his fellow with fire to pay — for example, [if] he lit his stockpile or burned anything of his — as it is stated (Exodus 22:5), “If a fire goes out, etc.” The understanding of “goes out” implies even if it went out on its own (Bava Batra 22b), and it comes to warn even if one lit [a fire] on his own [property] and it went out on its own and it damaged, that he is liable — since he did not watch his coals. As a man is obligated to watch his fire that it not [spread] and damage, since it is the way of fire to spread on its own, even though it is not a living being.

Its root is well-known, as we said.

Its laws — for example, the quantity of the distance that we must distance the [fire] from the [property’s] border, which is according to the height of the fire (Bava Batra 61a); the law of one who sends it in the hand of a deaf-mute, someone mentally incapacitated, a child, or [he sends it with] someone capable; the law of a group in which one brings the fire, another brings the wood and another stokes [it]; if he stoked it and the wind stoked it; the law of vessels hidden in the stockpile or hidden in the compound; what is the law (Bava Batra 62b) of a passing camel laden with flax that was lit by the candle of a storekeeper or by a Channukah light; and the rest of its details — are [all] elucidated in the second and sixth chapters of [Bava] Kamma. (See Mishneh Torah, Laws of Damages to Property 14.)

And [it] is practiced by males, as it is upon them to administer justice. And a court that transgresses it and does not judge the damager with payments — [according to what] is written — has violated a positive commandment.