Well, there's the baseball term it comes from (to have three misses when trying to swing at pitches), but it can in some cases also mean to fail to do something; most commonly, asking someone out. ("Man, I went up to her and tried to woo her, but I just struck out.")

The first way to phrase it does not really exist in English. Instead, to use "set fire to", it should read "Someone set fire to the heap of wood piled at the entrance" (also, the second way is correct). It's a way of changing the emphasis on what is important in the sentence that exists in other languages, such as German, but not in English. (The "someone" who set the fire is not important [or is unknown] to the person coming to the entrance is not important right now, the fact that there is a fire there is.)