93 FireHawk 968

Looked the 3 Stooges Fire Department...... Moe, Larry and Curly were completely clueless on how to activate the system.

WHB Porsche

Completely unacceptable.

jsh

Unbelievable and very sad how these guys react when the pressure's on. These guys are "emergency workers" and freak out when faced with the job they are hired (or volunteer) to do. WTF....

sbelles

It does make you wonder how competent the safety crews might be at your local DE.

TRT41

I took my family to the TMS Indy race last night. It was my 12 yr old daugther's first pro car race. We were setting in the turn 4 exit, in line of site to where the car on fire stopped. It seemed like an eternity before the crews got to the fire and also seemed to be a very slow reaction time once at the scene. I have to admit I was standing and yelling at them to run. What a relief to see the driver finally pulled from the car.
My daughter loved the racing, which was a big surprise since she is "not that into cars".

DaveM993

Unbelievable. Over 40 seconds from the time the first truck comes to a stop to when they have an extinguisher on the flames.

Start counting...one thousand and one, one thousand and two, one thousand and three.....

Someone needs to call a timeout on fire response effectiveness....maybe they have become too complacent since they are rare...but I thought the days of the Three Stooges response crews where behind us...

....apparently not.

Had a fire at mid Ohio at one of out DE's last year. Responder was spraying from the truck as he was getting out....made these guys look like amateurs. I guess some know what they are doing.

RJFabCab

Seriously... un FREAKIN' believable... thank goodness she got out ok, and she down played it on her post interview.

These crews really need to beef up. At this level, it should all be about REACTION since the proper 'processes' should have already been thought out and rehearsed over and over and over and over.

The crew looked confused and panicked about who was helping the driver, who was working the equipment, etc... they couldn't even get the first hose on the scene to work! WTF?!!!

Wreck Me Otter

http://www.motorsport.com/news/article.asp?ID=371656

Flying Finn

WTF indeed, that was really poor workmanship from those guys.

Larry Herman

Mid Ohio has some of the best corner workers & safety crews that I have ever seen. Maybe they should all take a lesson from them. On the spot in a moment, hot pulls off the track are routine. They are professionals and they know what they are doing. I had a tow truck take the apex from me at the chicane before the Keyhole in a PCA Club Race.

ltc

Does anyone know if these are TMS or IRL employees?

Again, I think back to the days of CART (fondly, before Tony George accidentally had 2 synapses fire and therefore thought he had a functioning brain) and couldn't imagine that scenario unfolding.

Apart from the response to the fire, which thankfully was not engulfing the driver, the driver extraction left a bit to be desired, especially if a spinal injury could have occurred as part of the impact/crash.

race911

Tony has nothing to do with IRL at this point, other than whatever the status of Vision racing is.

Now, about the fire. What (eventually) came out of the truck carrying the hose was water? To extinguish an ethanol fire, right? But this wasn't an ethanol fire. So I'm watching the car burn, Simona still inside, wondering why the safety crew was trying go at it with water.

DaveM993

I can only speak for the first responder's in this particular incident. The corner workers on the other hand....

The fire occurred at the end of the front straight...Corvette blew the engine and trailed flaming oil all the way down the front straight and guy pulled off line and into the grass under the bridge into turn one. Pretty quick thinking.

HOWEVER, race control called a black flag...even though the end of the front straight was engulfed in smoke...and then about 20 seconds later...inexplicably a "black/red"...which I assume was meant to be the meat ball...problem was the last corner workers onto the front straight showed a black AND red flag. The black and red flag was coming out LATE and we had cars coming onto the front straight at speed or close to it for about 20 seconds until they finally clued into the "just red" flag. Almost had a major incident because the end of the front straight was completely covered in smoke and cars were coming to a complete stop BEFORE the red came out because of the visibility. Fortunately...no second incident.

We must have had the "B" corner workers that day...

outline

it seems to be a week for woeful fire teams. first the horrible scenes at brno in the lamborghini super trofeo where the unconscious driver was left hanging half out of the door in a burning car while the fire teams stumbled and fumbled about and now this.
FIA are launching an investigation into the failings in brno, it now seems like perhaps theres deeper lying problems in the wider sport with training and competancy.

shustermeister

"In a race, I'm always scared, but what I fear most is fire." - Fireball Roberts
I recall seeing this quote a long time ago, and in years of DE I probably didn't pay enough attention to the possibility of fire in the car. Videos like this one, and those from the last week or so with car fires really makes me think about how prepared the corner workers/fire crews were at the DE's that I'd attended.
Does PCA mandate professional corner workers who are trained on the fire bottles?
Does each corner worker even have a fire bottle with them and are they prepared/allowed to use it?
Wondering if they are even allowed to use one, or would there be liability issues? Perhaps they just have to radio for the fire truck?
Would love to hear the answers to these questions by those in the know...