Ya'll can Monday quarterback all you want but all of us will have to wait until the final report comes out.
Fires onboard are absolute time critical emergencies. On average, given past history of accidents like Swiss Air 111, you have 15 minutes tops before an accident is nearly guaranteed at 20. A good brief for smoke or fire must include time. I brief it simply, at the first sign of smoke or fire onboard, we cancel the warning, and I start my clock. We will be on the ground in 11 minutes or less. Period.
Run your procedures and the tid bits, but the sense of urgency needs to be there from there frrom the instant you notice the smoke or fire.
Anything more than 10 to 12 minutes, you are just risking it. System failures will be minimal to none at first, but once the smoke/fire reaches the avionics or cockpit, you will have massive failures within a very short time. Swiss Air showed that very well.
I take offense to one of the previous posters regarding nearest suitable landing area and ValuJet 592. The ValuJet fire was already underway during taxi out. They even heard a loud pop (recorded on cvr too) and they wondered 'what was that?' (also on cvr). What they didn't know was that the fire was already so intense it ruptured a company tire in the cargo bin,. causing it to blow. Hence the pop noise heard by them. By the time they took off, a very bad situation became worse when the smoke creeped through the entire floor. Despite initial requests for MIA airport, they accepted any landing field/area that they could make it to. Prior to hitting the swamp, the flight control wirings and controls running through the floor were burned. They plunged with no control. For these pilots, their fire started on the ground, made worse during taxi, and their fate was sealed the second they hit V1.