120 Firefighters Work Part-Time at Nascar

A small army will be hiding today at Auto Club Speedway.

They will be lurking behind the grandstands, in the infield, at a whole host of tactical locations, ready to respond at a moment’s notice.

If fans never see this legion of firefighters, physicians, nurses, emergency medical technicians, paramedics, dispatchers and ambulance drivers, it means all has gone right.

When things do go wrong, the emergency teams are there to make sure the show goes on.

That’s not an easy task. The emergency professionals not only have to be able to react quickly to save lives, but they also have to do it in an especially compact time frame — and with something like 30 cameras and a national audience watching their every move.

“With a crash on the highway, you’d shut down the whole highway and take time to do whatever you need to do,” said Dr. Jeff Grange, the speedway’s medical director.

“Here, in the time of a commercial, you have to get out there, put out the fire, cut the driver out of the car, start medical care and get the whole scene cleaned up. All in the time of a commercial so the show can go on.”

The most vital part-time employees at the track include the 100-person medical staff that answers to Grange and the 120-plus firefighters who operate under the speedway’s fire and safety director, Mike Carnes.

Both men have worked at the track since it opened in 1997.

Grange, of Yucaipa, is director of emergency medical services at Loma Linda University Medical Center and the medical director for Symons Event Safety, a company he co-founded to fill a void in event medical and safety services. This weekend, Symons is providing ambulance support.

Carnes, who is a Lancaster-based Los Angeles County fire captain in his full-time job, started at the track on the medical side before taking over the lead of the fire and safety unit nine years ago.

The fire and safety and medical units work closely, going through annual 16-hour NASCAR-specified training sessions to prepare for race weekends by keeping up with technological advances and ever- improving operating tactics.

“We’re definitely not out there alone,” said Carnes, of Highland. “We have so many people coming together from different agencies for a common problem. It’s like the fire service on a major fire. So many people from so many different walks of life, it’s great to be a part of.”

The fire and safety team — made up of active firefighters as well as recent fire academy graduates looking to build their resumes and retirees who miss the action — will respond first to a crash.

Their responsibilities include, if necessary, extinguishing fires and extricating drivers.

On their heels comes the ambulance crew to care for the driver once he’s out of the car. If the situation is particularly serious, an on-track physician will be called out. On Sunday, the physician at the ready will be Grange himself.

The procedures aren’t all that far removed from what these emergency professionals do daily, said Carnes, whose wife, Sandy, works in the infield care center, where drivers often are taken to be checked after a crash.

“It’s all more similar than different,” Carnes said. “We’re responding into an area that is not totally controlled yet. There’s really no difference between freeway traffic and racecar traffic. A lot of the same safety procedures that we practice on the street we carry over onto the track.”

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