The chips never caught on fire, they did smoke a lot. The flavor is pretty strong, but I understand that I need to let them mellow a little bit before eating them. I ended up smoking everything for about an hour. A few of the pieces had significant color changes, but most had just the tiniest color change. I've put them in bags and now they're hanging out in fridge.
I still might soak the chips next time to see if it makes any difference in the flaovr. If the only purpose is to prevent them from catching fire, though, it's unneeded.