I am sorry to hear about this, but in one way you are very fortunate not to have your entire residence burn to the ground.

These dryers have a number of built in safety features that cause the dryer to shut down either the heating element or the entire dryer when lint build up causes an increase in temperature sufficient to start a fire. Obviously these did not work in you case.

I understand the dryer is out of warranty but I would still talk to Sears about it and also investigate you optons with both federal and state consumer product safety agencies. If nothing else it is important that they know this occurred so they can keep track of it in their data bank of these types of problems.

I strongly urge you to replace rather than attempt to have the dryer fixed. Fire can damage wiring and lead to a severe problem down the road.

Hope this helps.