PSA - Properly dispose of oily rags!

[mound]

PSA to remember never to leave oily rags wadded up!

A neighbor down the street was getting an addition put on and apparently the contractors left a bunch of wadded up oily rags in a large metal barrel along with other construction debris, inside the house.  

The whole thing caught fire. Luckily, the fire remained contained within the metal barrel and eventually put itself out but not before coating the entire inside of the house with a thick layer of soot. Lucky the whole place didn't burn down. 

What started as a simple bump-out addition turned into a complete gut job.

[Snipe Hunter]

That's crazy isn't it? That was drilled into our heads in High School shop. Out rag bin was outside the building in a vented metal can. I still do that.

[Stwood_]

Yep, people are still doing it.
3-4 years ago I helped son #2 and his son, tear off a second story roof off of a soft brick 1900's business building that was being remodeled.
Owners were staining the original oak floor and yep...left a pile of stain rags and it caught fire, taking out the roof, which was a flat, tared, rocked roof. It had 4-5 layers of paper and creek rock.
What was left that hadn't fell in, we cut it into sections we could lift and throw over into the dump trailer. We used probably 40 carbide circular blades. 6 trips to the dump with debree.
What-a-mess. Took a week, and were black head to toe the first 3 days.

[John Mihich]

I just throw them out in my covered trash can.  You can lay them out also till they dry.