  We investigate the growth of clusters within the forest fire model of
R\'{a}th and T\'{o}th [22]. The model is a continuous-time Markov process,
similar to the dynamical Erd\H{o}s-R\'{e}nyi random graph but with the addition
of so-called fires. A vertex may catch fire at any moment and, when it does so,
causes all edges within its connected cluster to burn, meaning that they
instantaneously disappear. Each burned edge may later reappear.
  We give a precise description of the process $C_t$ of the size of the cluster
of a tagged vertex, in the limit as the number of vertices in the model tends
to infinity. We show that $C_t$ is an explosive branching process with a
time-inhomogeneous offspring distribution and instantaneous return to $1$ on
each explosion. Additionally, we show that the characteristic curves used to
analyse the Smoluchowski-type coagulation equations associated to the model
have a probabilistic interpretation in terms of the process $C_t$.
