who was desperate to help his friend and from mere feet away heard him scream for help as he was burning, is one of the saddest pieces of motor racing footage in existence.
His absolute disgust with the Marshall's hits home, as I did that sort of volunteer work in the 1980's.
I was a member of the South Florida Region of the SCCA and was a "Flagging and Communications" Course Marshall, or "Corner Worker" as we were called. That region called Moroso Park in West Palm Beach as home and the leadership of the region was very good at training those that worked the corners. We also did 10 to 15 club events a year at Moroso, so as a group we had a lot of experience running corner safety at events, but we were by no means professional firefighters or EMT's, merely volunteers who had a few classes. While we did have several fire extinguishers at each corner station, if a car became completely enveloped there was little that could be done until a fully equipped fire crew arrived. Luckily I never witnessed such an occurrence. Fiery crashes are actually quite rare, thankfully.
In 1983 the "Grand Prix of Miami" began running in downtown Miami (An event sanctioned by the International MotorSports Association - IMSA), and it was the South Florida Region who supplied most of the workers. Same with the subsequent West Palm Beach Grand Prix (Also an IMSA event which ran from 1986 to '91) and the PPG/CART IndyCar series which first ran at Tamiami Park in 1985. The 12 Hours of Sebring and the 24 Hours of Daytona were covered by the Central Fla region.
The worst accident that happened when I was doing that sort of thing was at Moroso when a car missed a turn and went into a retention pond and the driver drowned. No one could get to him fast enough to help him.
That work, coupled with my job of driving tractor trailers led to me getting into Motor Racing as a truck driver. I was involved in IndyCar, NASCAR, NHRA and IMSA racing for over 12 years, participating in no fewer than 150 race meetings, and in all those events, I was present when another 6 persons lost their lives, drivers and corner workers included.
Safety has improved drastically since the 70's but racing remains a dangerous sport and if you're involved in it long enough, you'll see someone die while participating.
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