Ok here's what's happening. The NiChrome wire is wound around a length of silica fiber(a braided rope, made out of sand/glass basically, built to stay together at really high temperatures instead of actually catching on fire like most cloth). The silica fiber's main job, regardless of what anyone tells you, is pretty much to make sure that the wire coil stays wrapped up and tight. If the wire gets too tight, or too loose, it will either short out and fail, or you will reduce the surface area for the juice to sit in which means less vapor production.
Now... the silica fiber won't catch on fire and completely burn away, but if it is completely dried out (eg you have a crack dry atty with no juice or primer fluid in it), the fiber will scorch and burn. Don't worry about burning the fiber, it will still keep its shape and do its job even if its all charred, but the TASTE of the burning of the silica is nasty, it will linger for a very long time, and if you do burn the fiiber it will take it much much longer to actually absorb juice a produce a good flavor.
There is nothing wrong with the atty coil glowing red hot, but too much of it can lead to the fiber drying out.
Perhaps you got a batch of atty's that did not have any primer fluid in them, and when you added fluid and vaped, the fluid did not have enough time to saturate the silica fiber and you BBQed the heck out of it.
The easiest fix to this is to just rinse out the atty, or clean it however you see fit, set it down for a day to dry, then drop 8 drops of juice in the atty and either let it sit down for a while to soak into the fiber, or start vaping it gently untill the juice actually permeates the fiber.
The fiber in the atomizers isn't like the junk we use on our clothes, or wash rags. It takes a very long time to actually soak up viscous liquids, eg E-juice.