Spontaneous combustion or what?

This is odd, This morning my mom had a fire start in the back seat of her Equinox. Heres the story, My family owns a restaurant/bar, my mom takes home bar towels and rags and what not every week or so, well this morning she had them in the dryer for maybe 10 minutes “to get the wrinkles out” she said lol. well she then tossed em in a plastic garbage bag and tossed em in the back seat of her rig. well like 2 hours go by and my dad notices the truck is full of smoke, they open the door and poof the bag of towels ignites and starts up in flames! Now the truck was sittin outside in the parking lot for almost two hours before this happend. My mom does smoke but swears she couldnt have started it that way cuz she didnt have one in the process of puttin the rags in the bag or the drive to the shop. The back seat is a bench no power so that would rule out an electrical issue. We are stumped. The only thing i can think of that perhaps on or more of the rags had some sort of chemical on or in them and the warmth along with being airtight in the bag maybe caused some sort of gas buildup. Any ideas? btw rags were washed and dry if that matters.

Equinox’s around America decided because they are useless piles of garbage and their monetary value is worthless, that they would all start themselves on fire…hopefully relieving their owners of having a vehicle that’s worth 1/3rd of what is left on their loan.

Meh I would just assume your mom’s lying. Out of all the smokers I know the first thing they do once they get in their car is light up or ask if they can smoke in my cars.
If there was damage I’m sure insurance wouldnt cover it if that was the cause and probably raise her rates. Sounds like shes just covering her own ass.

had to be some chemical reaction from something that didn’t get cleaned off completely. Glad everyones ok.

na, shed tell me or my dad. Then all three of us would lie to insurance company.

chemicals + static electricity from bag plus oxygen from opening the door, that sounds about right. when she tossed the bag in the back seat the static electricity probably ignited one of the chemical rags into a semi-smoldering state, which smoldered profusely in the closed bag until a little oxygen hit it to create a flame.

So she was concerned about them being wrinkled, but tossed them in a bag and let them sit?

ILI

neatly folded of course

Similiar thing will happen if you have any type of wood varnish on a rag and put it in a closed bag. It will ignite. They warn not to do that since it is actually common for people to do so.

Sounds like a similiar reaction as RobTC said.

actually yes, folded.

Sounds like spontaneous combustion to be. Its because they were probably put away damp. Something about them drying can cause a chemical reaction wich will cause them to ignite.

My grand parents lost a garage years ago because they had parked a wagon of hay in there once it was bailed and piled on the wagon. It was raining the day before the hay was damp still. They came home from church the next day to find the whole grage in flames. They fire inspector said it was caused by spontaneous combustion because the hay was put away wet. Soulds liek what happened with to your mom with the towels.

happened at the pizzeria once.wifey came back from washing the towels/rags and we just set them in the back corner of the store.We kept smelling something burning,but couldn’t find anything.if it was a few hrs later,I would’ve had a new plaza!!!

Something about them being inclosed too. Like in your case Jay, a bag or in Mistero’s case the corner. I guess the lack of airflow is a contributing factor.

With my grand parent’s garage for example, it was fully enclosed and didn’t have any exhaust vents or anything. But the barn on the other hand has exhaust vents and many gaps in the boards and doors to that its constantly getting airfloe.

This is a case for the Hardly Boys

http://www.freewebs.com/typischemiel/hardly%20boys.jpg

ahh, cool to hear. I was gonna call Jason and Grant from TAPS to come check out the paranormal activity in my moms truck, i guess i wont.

I’m pretty sure your fat dragon caused the fire, it snuck off your back and climbed into her truck.

Well thank you for one of your fabulous and always uneducated posts.Go back to fuckin yer moms fat ass.

The oil/grease can definitely start on its own. My buddy works for one of the uniform companies and said they have to put their bins with dirty stuff outside if they are not going to get to them. They lost a huge washing machine that burned because the stuff inside just started up on its own. Call any uniform company they will tell you this is entirely possible.