Fire?

A few days ago we had a bit of a fright, the house started to fill with smoke and we were racing around trying to find what could be on fire. We eventually tracked it down to our living room, where we normally have a lamp running on a timer to switch on when it gets dark. I noticed the light was not on when it should have been and looked at the timer but it seemed to be ok. I then looked at the low energy lamp and found that it had burned out, literally. I am now a little worried about these lamps. I have been using them for many years because they are cheap to run but an old fashioned filament lamp is just a bit of wire in a glass bulb and cannot catch fire. Does this mean that my nice low carbon low cost lamps are a fire hazard? This had not occurred to me before, but I do know they contain electronic components a bit like those found in older TVs before flat screens were introduced and these caught fire often enough for household insurance to become more expensive.