I'm the granddaughter of a fireman, so I always have fire extinguishers around, and I've actually had to use them.
We had a breaker go bad; a bug got caught and sparked a fire that went from about 3 feet off the ground up to 15 feet off the ground in seconds. My husband happened to be standing about 15 feet away when it started, he ran straight for the fire extinguisher while yelling at me to call 911. The fire was out before the firemen arrived. After they investigated, they told us we would have lost at least the back half of our house if it weren't for that fire extinguisher, and they praised us for having one.
Another time, my husband was under the hood of our jeep, trying to find the cause of a minor problem. I was in the driver's seat with the motor running and the brake on. He motioned to me to cut the motor. I turned the key to off and pulled it out of the ignition, but to my bewilderment the motor kept running! He peered around the hood questioningly and I dangled the keys at him and shrugged. It was too loud to hear each other, but I quickly realized he was urgently trying to push the jeep out of the garage. He told me later he was worried about the jeep burning up and catching the house on fire. We got out of the garage and he grabbed the fire extinguisher and a pair of pliers. The battery was so hot that the battery cables melted, and he was able to just pull the cable off with the pliers and kill the motor that way.
Another time the wiring harness in our washing machine shorted out and caught fire.
So, yeah. I have fire extinguishers. One in the garage. One in the kitchen. One on each of our personal watercraft (which is required by law). One in the jeep. One in the laundry room. And, of course, smoke detectors.