I have had this happen a couple of times and wondered if anyone else has noticed it....Usually when the fire goes out the fire pit is left. Well, several times the fire is burning away merrily and when I tried to make a stew, the woman is "confused". When I checked the fire there was no hours of burn time yet there it was. That has happened several other times. I've learned to check to be sure a fire is really there every day before I try to make a stew. Of course I try to make sure it doesn't go out but it's really strange to see a fire but know it really isn't there.

Have you seen how if you look at the info for a nursing mom it sometimes says 0 minutes because there is less than a minute before she puts the baby down?

Well, it's the same principle.

I have had the fire go out completely and yet still have a full stack of wood in the pit....I just have to add more dry grass and relite it and other times I have to get the wood too....

it takes a few minutes for the game to refresh, which is why there are times when a nursing counter will say 0, but the mom is still holding baby...same thing with the fire, even though the counter hit zero, it hasn't refreshed yet, so it doesn't "know" the fire is out yet

This has happened to me too.

for the longest time my fire said "190235512 hours remaining"
I figured wow they must have really been collecting fire wood.

Then one day the fire went out. Whenever I started a new fire it always said 9 hours remaining. Regardless of how long I let it burn. Now I can light it and the fire burns for 9 hours and the timer counts down accordingly.

I kinda liked not having to worry about putting wood on the fire.

Did you have the game paused? The timings all go out of whack if you pause.

no it was like for a good four weeks while I was playing

Really wacky timers like that are usually caused by changes in the computer's system clock.