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Wow, if this one doesn’t get your heart beating, you must already be dead. Thanks to great video from C2videos.com we are all able to watch this whole scary incident unfold. During what looks like a standard dirt track Saturday night wreck, a car bursts into flames and rolls onto its side. Track crews, cars, and spectators scramble, and while safety workers try to knock down the flames, driver Kip Hughes gets out of his car and jumps out of the frying pan and into the fire. You can clearly see Hughes pulling the belts off trapped driver Terry Muskratt with no hesitation.
The race was going on in Ada Oklahoma at Oklahoma Sports Park and, according to the Ada News, drivers had just come back onto the track after refueling.
Reports say that Hughes, a life long racer, watched his father burn in a terrible race fire in 1991 when he was only 7 years old. Watching from the grand stands, Hughes could do nothing.
“I don’t want that to ever happen again for anybody,” Hughes said.
“Whether I’m battling it out with them on the race track and we’re
exchanging “the finger” or whatever else, it’s a horrible deal for a
family to go through.”
Hughes stopped his car on the track, jumped out and immediately ran to Muskratt’s aid. With a jammed window net, and tons of smoke, Muskratt could not get out of the car himself. Hughes literally ripped the burning net out of the car and dragged Muskratt out.
According to the Ada New story, which you can read via the link below, Muskratt couldn’t get his belts to release because he was hanging in them. Hughes reached in and got them to release, and the whole ordeal took almost 30 seconds. Neither driver was injured bad. Hughes has a torched eyebrow, and Muskratt suffered burns to one hand.
As a guy who has been on fire a fare number of times, and who has had to put out fires for others, I can tell you that the single biggest thing that Kip Hughes did here was to stay calm and do what needed to be done. I have fought fires on cars with fuel still pumping and going through extinguisher after extinguisher while trying to keep the fire at bay long enough to kill the power. Staying calm and never giving up is the key. Kip Hughes did a really good thing here and it is really amazing to be able to see it.
With any luck both of these guys will be back racing next weekend bumping and banging for position.
Read the Ada News story here, it includes great interviews and more. Definitely worth reading.
That, my friends, is a hero in action. Love the safety suits of the track guys. That’s why you take your life in your own hands when you race on those little local tracks.