It's a palm. That fibrous stuff under the trunk "wraps" is usually bone dry, loose and dusty. So, tinder. Lights up like fat wood almost, no problem here imagining a saw's hot chain/bar igniting that stuff. I'm more surprised by the amount of time it took him to realize shits about to get real.
When I lived in The Keys I was picking up and tending to palm debris all the time. No shortage of black scorpians and centipedes in that stuff, so to me fire would actually be the correct tool. Bugs are cool in general, interesting things. But those damn centipedes can DIAF far as I'm concerned.