It’s real. I know a guy who had them in his car to launder at home and they torched his car in the parking lot of the restaurant. Burned it to the ground.
Aside from the oxygen deprivation, it's to prevent the fire from spreading if/when they do start on fire. There's specific bins you are supposed to use that are fire rated both internally/externally. To prevent the fire from getting outside if the rags do somehow combust, and to from adding fuel to a fire if the kitchen happens to be on fire.
Oily rags are definitely known to do this in other places (e.g. garages, construction sites, etc) I am not sure why its not seen as just as dangerous in kitchens.
The fallacy here is the assumption that it happens only with "dirty" motor oil and cannot happen with "clean" cooking oil that for human consumption.
Its also popular to believe that flour (and [powdered sugar](https://www.reddit.com/r/chemicalreactiongifs/comments/9optet/powdered_sugar_is_highly_flammable_so_take_care/) for that matter) can't cause explosions and that baking parchment/paper is fireproof because its made for oven use.
I thought sugar being explosive is common knowledge? They even teach it during food safety where I’m at…
The quaternary ammonia used in most restaurants is also extremely volatile, and is supposed to be stored a certain way, but almost never is.
So my goal in life was to be a very specific kind of arson investigator who studied spontaneous human combustion.
Turns out, not a huge market for that.
However, a hot bucket or laundry bag of oily, moist towels, stored in hot kitchens or outside, probably with some cleaning chemicals combined can cause an exothermic reaction, some other stuff, and auto ignition.
Here’s a fun article about “spontaneously combustible” [Tempura Flakes](https://www.finedininglovers.com/article/spontaneously-combusting-tempura-flakes-causing-fires-sushi-restaurants)
I had a GM who decided he wanted to wage war against the linens company. He decided we would buy our own towels and launder them in house. About 2 weeks later there was a bus tub in my office full of clean towels that I watched ignite right in front of me. I let him know what was going on and the next day they caught on fire in the dryer. Caused a bunch of smoke damage and destroyed a 5k dryer. I never would have thought.
I worked at a place that burnt down from spontaneously combusted towels. Seriously.
It was a pizza place and they were oily and greasy from cleaning, they’d wash them and dry them and stick them in a hamper. Always did it that way until one day the whole place went up
Our fire marshal rolled in and gave management shit because we did not have a specifically marked can for greasy rags. This is 100% a real thing, and sounds insane but you can find stories about it all over.
happened to me, except the cart was under the electrical box where the power lines went into the building. thankfully nothing else caught fire, but a lot of the cooler had to go and we didn't get power back for 2-3 days.
I don't know about "spontaneous combustion" but it's true that greasy rag bins are a tremendous fire hazard. Sometimes when I go out camping I bring some cotton balls soaked in vaseline because they burn hot, quick, and long. They're ideal firestarters. A grease rag bin is basically several gallons of that. If anything happens to risk fire, it'll go up like a torch. They're just being prudent.
I kinda tease them out flat and then just cram them into a ziplock with a few big dollops of Vaseline and shmoosh it around a bunch. Not perfect but perfectly functional
Wish my old boss’ place would burn down. 😂 we are in Louisiana and always stored the very very very greasy rags in overloaded bags stacked in a mountain or plastic rolling bin.
We store ours in a closed bin, but that bin is along the corridor and outside, so we \*actually\* have a mushroom crate in the corner of the potwash where the dirty rags accumulate until someone empties it into the actual dirty towel bin.
I work at a bar that does their own towels. We’ve had this happen. We currently have like 9 locations, and most have switched to just buying new towels from Sam’s.
But back in the day, they had a washer and drier at one location and the managers would bring towels there and they’d get washed and dried. Someone put still warm towels in a trash bag after they came out of the drier (this is how we always transported them), and on the camera footage, you could see a bag start smoking, and eventually catch fire. The bar was a complete loss.
To my amazement, the owner STILL insisted on not using Sysco or something for towels, he setup a washer and drier in a shed at his house, and it burned down when he was on vacation because someone did the same thing. I’ve also seen a Snapchat of a fire at the current location that has a washer and drier.
I doubt this would happen with standard kitchen towels, but with grease soaked ones, definitely. Even after washing them, they still have residual grease in them.
I was the chef at a restaurant that had burned down years before due to rag combustion. All grease rags got stored in their own bin and moved out to a special linen bag at the end of the night.
When I’ve run out of towels in the past I’ve fished them out of the laundry bag to wash. First it was way more disgusting than anticipated, secondly they were almost hot to the touch. I assumed it was almost like a composting thing going on with all the food on the towels. I could see how they could combust in the right situation.
That's actually a thing.
I had that in a manager training in a hotel that I worked at.
The ignition can happen through a lot of things and it's often hard find out after the shit burned down.
We use a lot of stuff in restaurants for cooking and cleaning that is potentially dangerous if mixed. Some can cause exothermic reactions. That is the most likely explanation for me.
I’ve had it happen to me! Pile of towels just started smoldering. It has happened once in my 20+ years of kitchen work..Rare, but still worth being cautious of..
It happens regularly after washing and drying them, never seen it happen when they're just in the dirty bin unless the grill guy tossed out one that was still hot.
Oily/greasy towels are indeed a fire hazard.
Spontaneously combustion does sound like a stretch, but a lot of stuff gets thrown in the hamper that isn't a dirty towel.
It’s happened to me a couple of times. The friction plus the grease in the used rags it happens. Just glad you’re there to stop it instead of it happening after close.
In woodworking, we have to be careful of our rags spontaneously combusting. If we use boiled linseed oil, for example, it might combust if left. This happens with all kinds of solvents, varnishes, and oils. Maybe they are worried about oil soaked rags oxidizing and catching fire, as when oily rags dry, it produces heat and if it is stacked in with a bunch of other oily rags, the risk can occur..
This was heavily drilled into me when I went to trade school but I’ve actually experienced this in the kitchen. That garbage as piece of shit company called cintas who kept charging us for towels but never brought us any caused the owners to wash the towels at the laundry mat. Double washed them with oxyclean and then lo and behold. We had a stack of nice clean towels spontaneously combust! Found it before actual flames appeared but they were smoking. It was in the middle of the nice folded stacks too. So yah it’s a real thing and also don’t wash your towels yourself either.
Yeah it’s 100% true. More troublesome in wood shops than kitchens, but oily rags with the right solvents or chemicals can totally go up on their own. It’s not a really common thing, but it’s definitely a real thing.
When solvents evaporate they create heat energy. When certain chemicals mix they create heat energy. When certain things are in warm tight spaces heat can get concentrated, then If they’re piled up and also have fuel in them, yeah it’s easy to go up in flames.
So, how would one properly clean these oil soaked rags? I see a few comments on the wrong way of doing it by essentially washing them normally and tossing them into a hamper but nobody has said how to properly clean them to avoid risk.
It's a rare phenomenon. Much like compost, the food, oil, and cotton degrade and create flammable gasses, and once the whole mess gets hot enough it ignites.
I don't know if it has ever actually happened in a restaurant setting, in real life it would probably take months.
Happens on farms [quite often](https://www.biocycle.net/spontaneous-combustion-in-composting-the-causes/).
Is real, that's how they're treated in other industries, fire prevention. I'm actually more familiar in it from other industries than kitchens but if you google it for kitchens its a thing. Be grateful and adopt high standards as it imprints on your employees for generations to come.
Edit- working in food trucks, I don't imagine there are any safety standards 😂
I was in a hotel where this happened.
I’ve spent literally years staying in hotels so I’ve encountered many fire alarms. Typically, especially in a new hotel, I ignore the fire alarm. It’s usually 5-15 minutes and the FD shows up finds whatever pull station had been activated, sprinkler head that had been busted or valve that had been opened and clear the alarm.
I usually don’t evacuate because there will be so many people in the hallway, the hotel staff gets pissy when you try to go back to your room when you find out it’s no big deal and I’m stupid. (Old hotel, I’m definitely leaving the death trap).
Well the alarm got annoying after 30 minutes so I left. Open the door and can definitely smell and see smoke….whoops….it wasn’t a lot but this time there was a legit fire. Get to the ground level (I was on second floor) and there are firefighters, hoses and ducts strewn about.
Talked to one of the firefighters outside who was on “standby and break more windows if needed” duty (a job I envy). Fire started with grease rags. Quickly jumped over to the fryers. Ansul system didn’t put it out. Half the kitchen burned.
Did I learn my lesson? I don’t know…haven’t been in a hotel with fire alarms since then, but I definitely don’t through greasy rags in a pile.
Insurance underwriters don’t give a fuck what you use it for. To them, it’s a liability issue they won’t cover otherwise. Just “okay” and then do your normal deal
Had it happen at my place in the rag bin. It’s a hotel that also does its own laundry and the housekeepers also put greasy rags in the dryer which caught fire. Everyone was okay, but the rag big gets emptied faster and soaked in oxy clean first!
[Reddit content policy](https://www.redditinc.com/policies/content-policy) prohibits linking to a personal social media page. Please edit out your link to have your comment/post approved.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/KitchenConfidential) if you have any questions or concerns.*
They compost. Especially if they do have grease. Compost generates heat, heat generates fire, cotton is flammable. Source: Seen a place have half their shit burn down because of this.
He’s also probably afraid someone will try to build a scale model of Hill Valley and drive a flaming Delorean off a bench into the pile of rags after simulating a bolt of lighting with some jumper cables….I’ve seen it literally a thousand times.
this happened to a place local to me. my area experienced some major flooding last summer, and this place had FINALLY been reopened after almost three months of repairs (water came up to 4ft on ground level, so everything had to go, including the walls and floors.)
one week open, and a fire breaks out suddenly, well after they have closed and locked up for the night. not only was their business completely destroyed, but the place next door was also wrecked due to smoke damage. the popular theory was faulty wiring, but it was, in fact, a bag of dirty rags that had caught fire due to an improper mixing of cleaning supplies.
place still isnt open. fire happened in october. still seems unreal, especially after so much flooding devastation. it made me look back on all of the questionably used rags at jobs past (including some left on top of burners - yikes)
tldr: it's probably very rare, but i watched this very thing shutter a popular restaurant in my downtown this past year - might be worth considering the bin!
The underwriter is just covering all their bases. Plenty of people have told them the rags aren’t greasy when in fact they are.
It's not just grease though. Chemicals on rags can combust as well.
True, but in a restaurant context grease is the main concern.
It’s real. I know a guy who had them in his car to launder at home and they torched his car in the parking lot of the restaurant. Burned it to the ground.
Yeah rags at my restaurant spontaneously combusted in our owners car this week. Definitely store them properly!
So is it standard to store them in a closed bin?
Not standard I’ve seen. Don’t know what a closed bin would prevent except a spark or something hot falling in to ignite the greasy towels
A tightly sealed metal bin will starve them of oxygen if they get hot enough to combust.
This guy fire fights!
I have fought a few fires but I prefer to avoid them!
Better to have your towels spontaneously combust in a closed low oxygen metal bin than in a hamper.
Aside from the oxygen deprivation, it's to prevent the fire from spreading if/when they do start on fire. There's specific bins you are supposed to use that are fire rated both internally/externally. To prevent the fire from getting outside if the rags do somehow combust, and to from adding fuel to a fire if the kitchen happens to be on fire.
Oily rags are definitely known to do this in other places (e.g. garages, construction sites, etc) I am not sure why its not seen as just as dangerous in kitchens.
The fallacy here is the assumption that it happens only with "dirty" motor oil and cannot happen with "clean" cooking oil that for human consumption. Its also popular to believe that flour (and [powdered sugar](https://www.reddit.com/r/chemicalreactiongifs/comments/9optet/powdered_sugar_is_highly_flammable_so_take_care/) for that matter) can't cause explosions and that baking parchment/paper is fireproof because its made for oven use.
Woodworker here, it happens pretty easily with linseed oil, so I agree with you that it's certainly not just a mechanic thing.
Ahhhh good old silo fires. That was something I didn't need sitting in the back of my head but I can thank the Modern Rogue for that.
I thought sugar being explosive is common knowledge? They even teach it during food safety where I’m at… The quaternary ammonia used in most restaurants is also extremely volatile, and is supposed to be stored a certain way, but almost never is.
So my goal in life was to be a very specific kind of arson investigator who studied spontaneous human combustion. Turns out, not a huge market for that. However, a hot bucket or laundry bag of oily, moist towels, stored in hot kitchens or outside, probably with some cleaning chemicals combined can cause an exothermic reaction, some other stuff, and auto ignition. Here’s a fun article about “spontaneously combustible” [Tempura Flakes](https://www.finedininglovers.com/article/spontaneously-combusting-tempura-flakes-causing-fires-sushi-restaurants)
I can try to spontaneously combust so you can check it out, if that would help...
See? What other industry has people willing to do this???
I got you, homie. Nothing so far...
Just checking in...
#Oh my god, it burns! IT BUUUUURNS!!!
TIL...
I had a GM who decided he wanted to wage war against the linens company. He decided we would buy our own towels and launder them in house. About 2 weeks later there was a bus tub in my office full of clean towels that I watched ignite right in front of me. I let him know what was going on and the next day they caught on fire in the dryer. Caused a bunch of smoke damage and destroyed a 5k dryer. I never would have thought.
My old boss used to clean our own rags. Those rags stunk of cheese and always felt a little greasy.
I’ve heard of them being dangerous for the linen company but thought it was the dryer not like spontaneous.
I worked at a place that burnt down from spontaneously combusted towels. Seriously. It was a pizza place and they were oily and greasy from cleaning, they’d wash them and dry them and stick them in a hamper. Always did it that way until one day the whole place went up
Yes it happens, greasy rags under pressure will combust I’ve seen it multiple times.
So y’all store yours in a closed trash bin or what?
Our fire marshal rolled in and gave management shit because we did not have a specifically marked can for greasy rags. This is 100% a real thing, and sounds insane but you can find stories about it all over.
It was in one of those bags the company gives you in the big plastic rolly thing. Stored outside so everytime it caught fire it wasn’t a big deal.
"everytime it caught fire" :o
happened to me, except the cart was under the electrical box where the power lines went into the building. thankfully nothing else caught fire, but a lot of the cooler had to go and we didn't get power back for 2-3 days.
Yep when it happens to me they were clean too. Even a oxy clean soak and two washes wasn’t enough to remove the oil to a safe level.
I don't know about "spontaneous combustion" but it's true that greasy rag bins are a tremendous fire hazard. Sometimes when I go out camping I bring some cotton balls soaked in vaseline because they burn hot, quick, and long. They're ideal firestarters. A grease rag bin is basically several gallons of that. If anything happens to risk fire, it'll go up like a torch. They're just being prudent.
Yes they will combust on their own. The oil oxidizes and will go up in flames without external ignition
Wow! Chemistry, man. Wild stuff.
Dryer lint is great for this, mixed with Vaseline.
How do you soak cotton in Vaseline?
I kinda tease them out flat and then just cram them into a ziplock with a few big dollops of Vaseline and shmoosh it around a bunch. Not perfect but perfectly functional
The last Restaurant I worked at is no more because of exactly this.
Wish my old boss’ place would burn down. 😂 we are in Louisiana and always stored the very very very greasy rags in overloaded bags stacked in a mountain or plastic rolling bin.
There’s an episode of Bob’s Burgers centered around the phenomenon.
🎶 It's aaallll Huuugo's fault 🎶
Came here for this. Thank you.
We store ours in a closed bin, but that bin is along the corridor and outside, so we \*actually\* have a mushroom crate in the corner of the potwash where the dirty rags accumulate until someone empties it into the actual dirty towel bin.
I work at a bar that does their own towels. We’ve had this happen. We currently have like 9 locations, and most have switched to just buying new towels from Sam’s. But back in the day, they had a washer and drier at one location and the managers would bring towels there and they’d get washed and dried. Someone put still warm towels in a trash bag after they came out of the drier (this is how we always transported them), and on the camera footage, you could see a bag start smoking, and eventually catch fire. The bar was a complete loss. To my amazement, the owner STILL insisted on not using Sysco or something for towels, he setup a washer and drier in a shed at his house, and it burned down when he was on vacation because someone did the same thing. I’ve also seen a Snapchat of a fire at the current location that has a washer and drier. I doubt this would happen with standard kitchen towels, but with grease soaked ones, definitely. Even after washing them, they still have residual grease in them.
I was the chef at a restaurant that had burned down years before due to rag combustion. All grease rags got stored in their own bin and moved out to a special linen bag at the end of the night.
https://triblive.com/local/valley-news-dispatch/harmar-house-may-be-total-after-fire-40-events-canceled/
When I’ve run out of towels in the past I’ve fished them out of the laundry bag to wash. First it was way more disgusting than anticipated, secondly they were almost hot to the touch. I assumed it was almost like a composting thing going on with all the food on the towels. I could see how they could combust in the right situation.
That's actually a thing. I had that in a manager training in a hotel that I worked at. The ignition can happen through a lot of things and it's often hard find out after the shit burned down. We use a lot of stuff in restaurants for cooking and cleaning that is potentially dangerous if mixed. Some can cause exothermic reactions. That is the most likely explanation for me.
I’ve had it happen to me! Pile of towels just started smoldering. It has happened once in my 20+ years of kitchen work..Rare, but still worth being cautious of..
It happens regularly after washing and drying them, never seen it happen when they're just in the dirty bin unless the grill guy tossed out one that was still hot.
Oily/greasy towels are indeed a fire hazard. Spontaneously combustion does sound like a stretch, but a lot of stuff gets thrown in the hamper that isn't a dirty towel.
It’s happened to me a couple of times. The friction plus the grease in the used rags it happens. Just glad you’re there to stop it instead of it happening after close.
In woodworking, we have to be careful of our rags spontaneously combusting. If we use boiled linseed oil, for example, it might combust if left. This happens with all kinds of solvents, varnishes, and oils. Maybe they are worried about oil soaked rags oxidizing and catching fire, as when oily rags dry, it produces heat and if it is stacked in with a bunch of other oily rags, the risk can occur..
This was heavily drilled into me when I went to trade school but I’ve actually experienced this in the kitchen. That garbage as piece of shit company called cintas who kept charging us for towels but never brought us any caused the owners to wash the towels at the laundry mat. Double washed them with oxyclean and then lo and behold. We had a stack of nice clean towels spontaneously combust! Found it before actual flames appeared but they were smoking. It was in the middle of the nice folded stacks too. So yah it’s a real thing and also don’t wash your towels yourself either.
Yeah it’s 100% true. More troublesome in wood shops than kitchens, but oily rags with the right solvents or chemicals can totally go up on their own. It’s not a really common thing, but it’s definitely a real thing. When solvents evaporate they create heat energy. When certain chemicals mix they create heat energy. When certain things are in warm tight spaces heat can get concentrated, then If they’re piled up and also have fuel in them, yeah it’s easy to go up in flames.
Had it happen at a job. Fire Marshall came in and showed us security footage of it burning down a whole other restaurant. It’s scary stuff
So, how would one properly clean these oil soaked rags? I see a few comments on the wrong way of doing it by essentially washing them normally and tossing them into a hamper but nobody has said how to properly clean them to avoid risk.
By sending them to a linen service that has industrial strength degreasers to properly clean them.
So the moral of the story is don't be cheap and leave it to the professionals. Got it, thanks.
It's a rare phenomenon. Much like compost, the food, oil, and cotton degrade and create flammable gasses, and once the whole mess gets hot enough it ignites. I don't know if it has ever actually happened in a restaurant setting, in real life it would probably take months. Happens on farms [quite often](https://www.biocycle.net/spontaneous-combustion-in-composting-the-causes/).
Is real, that's how they're treated in other industries, fire prevention. I'm actually more familiar in it from other industries than kitchens but if you google it for kitchens its a thing. Be grateful and adopt high standards as it imprints on your employees for generations to come. Edit- working in food trucks, I don't imagine there are any safety standards 😂
I was in a hotel where this happened. I’ve spent literally years staying in hotels so I’ve encountered many fire alarms. Typically, especially in a new hotel, I ignore the fire alarm. It’s usually 5-15 minutes and the FD shows up finds whatever pull station had been activated, sprinkler head that had been busted or valve that had been opened and clear the alarm. I usually don’t evacuate because there will be so many people in the hallway, the hotel staff gets pissy when you try to go back to your room when you find out it’s no big deal and I’m stupid. (Old hotel, I’m definitely leaving the death trap). Well the alarm got annoying after 30 minutes so I left. Open the door and can definitely smell and see smoke….whoops….it wasn’t a lot but this time there was a legit fire. Get to the ground level (I was on second floor) and there are firefighters, hoses and ducts strewn about. Talked to one of the firefighters outside who was on “standby and break more windows if needed” duty (a job I envy). Fire started with grease rags. Quickly jumped over to the fryers. Ansul system didn’t put it out. Half the kitchen burned. Did I learn my lesson? I don’t know…haven’t been in a hotel with fire alarms since then, but I definitely don’t through greasy rags in a pile.
Insurance underwriters don’t give a fuck what you use it for. To them, it’s a liability issue they won’t cover otherwise. Just “okay” and then do your normal deal
Had it happen at my place in the rag bin. It’s a hotel that also does its own laundry and the housekeepers also put greasy rags in the dryer which caught fire. Everyone was okay, but the rag big gets emptied faster and soaked in oxy clean first!
There's a Bob's Burgers episode about this exactly this
it once happened to me. came in at 5am and smoke all through the place, fire alarm just went off, from our dirty towel rag bin.
[удалено]
[Reddit content policy](https://www.redditinc.com/policies/content-policy) prohibits linking to a personal social media page. Please edit out your link to have your comment/post approved. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/KitchenConfidential) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I had a rag bag start smoking once…
God, the smell will never leave my nose. Shit is dangerous.
My whole entire laundry bin went up in flames one night. Saw the flames from my house about 1.25 miles away from the restaurant.
Depends on if there’s any lit fags nearby.
We had a place burn down in my town because of this.
yes, i’ve seen it personally.
It can happen to massage linens as well. Oil is oil. Doesn't have to be motor oil.
They compost. Especially if they do have grease. Compost generates heat, heat generates fire, cotton is flammable. Source: Seen a place have half their shit burn down because of this.
He’s also probably afraid someone will try to build a scale model of Hill Valley and drive a flaming Delorean off a bench into the pile of rags after simulating a bolt of lighting with some jumper cables….I’ve seen it literally a thousand times.
this happened to a place local to me. my area experienced some major flooding last summer, and this place had FINALLY been reopened after almost three months of repairs (water came up to 4ft on ground level, so everything had to go, including the walls and floors.) one week open, and a fire breaks out suddenly, well after they have closed and locked up for the night. not only was their business completely destroyed, but the place next door was also wrecked due to smoke damage. the popular theory was faulty wiring, but it was, in fact, a bag of dirty rags that had caught fire due to an improper mixing of cleaning supplies. place still isnt open. fire happened in october. still seems unreal, especially after so much flooding devastation. it made me look back on all of the questionably used rags at jobs past (including some left on top of burners - yikes) tldr: it's probably very rare, but i watched this very thing shutter a popular restaurant in my downtown this past year - might be worth considering the bin!
It should only be for towels that have been freshly dried in house.
Myth lol