Would you say ひ or か for fire here?
i never know which ty
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ひ. It would be か if it’s short for Tuesday or is referring to fire as in one of the five elements in Chinese philosophy. But just regular old fire is ひ.
There are exceptions, but as a general rule, words formed from single kanji use the 訓読み.
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(though i might say 火事 in this case)
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sure, then use 火事を起こった
I do take your point about that being a good term for this situation, but for the sake of learners looking in I need to nitpick: 起こる is intransitive, it’s 火事が起こっている (just using ている to match the tense of the topic title). Like, a fire is occurring.
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It’s a 出る thing here (though I realized from Yomitan). 「火事」の英語・英語例文・英語表現 - Weblio和英辞書
(though why 火災 is here?)
I wouldn’t replace 火（ひ）with 火事 in the sentence in question, it would lose its meaning.
このホテル、火が出てるけど平気？
There are flames coming out of the hotel, are they OK over there?
火 basically refers to flames, the process of burning and its effects of light and heat.
火事 is more specifically an incident where something is on fire that’s not supposed to be.
When you say that there’s a 火事 in the hotel, you already went past the point of wondering if those flames are normal or not. A fire brigade needs to deal with this immediately before it spreads.
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Ooh. Is that the distinction btwn when things use が instead of を? I’ve never really known the rule, just kinda internalized “this word uses が” from exposure
I stand corrected. ありがとう
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ah, that makes sense. thanks
Yeah, 起こる is intransitive meaning there’s no “doer” here. A fire happens, no mention of it being caused by anyone. 起こす would be the transitive alternative, to cause something, that does take を. But really if you’re remembering how things pair well the way you’re doing it is probably best anyway, I’m basically retroactively explaining the stuff I just learned through immersing hard a lot. I have to reach for it because me saying “no the other way sounds wrong” doesn’t help much 
It’s also not a hard rule that you never use を with intransative verbs because を can also do things like “indicate an area traversed” to come to things like 道を歩く where walking is obviously not being done to anything and is thus intransitive. But I think bogging yourself down in the rules is mostly counterproductive compared to just learning what sounds good unless you’re particularly interested in grammar minutiae (and still might be better served by seeing how Japanese sources explain those things later).
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Where is the sentence from anyway? Why bother asking 平気? Why not 逃げろ or something?
Otherwise, how can このホテル、火が出てる refer to something other than 火事? It still needs be dealt with immediately.
これは平気。 
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it’s from the 平気 sentences ;p
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Possible scenario: You are outside the hotel, maybe a block away, sighting fire and smoke exuding from the building. So, it’s ok to wonder about the flame.
Most likely not normal, just not feeling involved. 火事 or 火災 doesn’t make things any better. But 火 still feels more natural to me. It’s not fire event exuding after all.