Slowest safety crew in the history of ever.
It was a scary sight when IRL rookie Simona deSilvestro hit the wall in Turn 3 and burst into flames. Her car slid down the banking and came to rest at the bottom of the track close to where I was sitting. The fire quickly grew larger as the safety crew rolled towards her like they were driving to WalMart.
What happened next was straight out of Keystone Cops. None of the rescuers had a fire extinguisher. Instead they fiddled with a fire hose that wouldn't work. All the while the fire was getting bigger and bigger. Those Nomex firesuits the drivers wear are great, but they have their limits. People all around me were yelling "Get her out!" while the crew struggled with the firehose.
After what seemed like an eternity, one of the men finally gave up on the hose and turned his attention to helping extract deSilvestro from the inferno. 20 seconds after they arrived, one of the guys got a bright idea and grabbed a fire extinguisher. But in his panic he couldn't pull the pin to activate it. The whole time deSilvestro is still strapped in the burning car. Most of the safety crew then gave up on the firehose and went to help extract de Silvestro.
A second safety vehicle arrived and they wisely jumped out with extinguishers in hand ready to fight the fire. They also got their firehose to work. When they finally got Simona out of the burning car she had been on fire for nearly 1 minute. Fortunately, she only suffered minor burns to her right hand.
The IRL provides the safety crews and equipment for their races. They need to take a serious look at them. That was either poor training, poor equipment or both. The driver of the first safety vehicle needs to be fired. He took his sweet time driving to the fire then never showed any urgency or effort once he was on scene. Well, he did jog back to the safety vehicle to fiddle with the firehose some more before walking back to the burning car, so I guess he showed a miniscule amount of effort.
Why do I have a feeling he moves faster toward the buffet line than toward that fire?
1 comment:
A friend gave me some freebie tickets at lunch yesterday, so after Church, I asked my daughter (8) if she wanted to go to the races.
"No."
I explained that these were really fast cars with a high pitched whine (as I imitated the sound of the IRL cars), and told her we could just go check it out and leave if she didn't like it.
Just then my oldest son called and told me he'd gotten off work early. I asked him if he wanted to go to the races, thinking I'd drop my daughter off with her grandparents.
"Sure. Wait a minute, I've got a call from [his best friend]."
When he calls me back, I tell him that if he and his friend want to go, they can have the tickets. We agree to meet at the grandparents' house.
We arrive first. The grandparents are not home. My daughter is softly crying. "What's the matter?"
"I wanted to go to the races."
Then son's friend arrives. Then the grandparents. Then my son. I give the tickets to my son. Grandparents explain that they're on their way to the Speedway to pick up surplus food for a local charity.
"We can help," I said.
So we follow them to the charity's offices. Alas, they had no extra passes.
We ended up driving out to TMS and checking out all the vendors, thought maybe we'd find someone with comp tickets, no such luck, but still we got the sound of the race, and some pretty good exercise.
But, we left just in time to see the fireworks show, ahead of the traffic, and #1 son called to say they'd enjoyed the race.
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