It's always an eye-opener when we do the flight crew-cabin crew CRM 'discussions' at SEP. I've heard views from both ends of the spectrum. Some of the cabin crew almost refused to initiate evacuation unless water was involved and others seemed to want to deploy the slides because of a brewer failure (okay, I led about that bit).
The common fear was fire, but so often the scenario will involve an engine and the pilots will be trying to do something about that, probably with a degree of success. The last thing you really want after an RTO and whilst dealing with an engine fire is a load of passengers jumping off your aircraft because someone saw some flames and a member of the cabin crew considered this catastrophic.
My personal view, besides the ditching case, is to consider what is actually in the cabin, versus what's outside. This doesn't negate common sense and it doesn't need to be prescribed, however, if there's fire/smoke in the cabin which cannot be controlled then let's blow the slides. Unless the wings are on fire, if there's nothing in the cabin then give the pilots a while (which will seem like several lifetimes) to diagnose and try to deal with the problem and let the crew know what's going on. At the end of the day the fire extinguishers will probably work their magic on the engines, but the rest can't be stopped from the flight deck.
And.........
Recover