Skip to main content

Crowd Control and Safety Upgrades

11:00
54:27
84.9K views

At 11:00 in

Most Historic Drag Strip in America? Hot Rod Golden Era Time Capsule Lives Here!! (Super Sketchy)

What happens here

Ronnie recounts a dramatic incident from the late 1980s where a dragster crashed, ignited, and its nitrogen bottle exploded, causing a fire in the adjacent field. The ensuing chaos involved the driver refusing to abandon his burning car, sheriffs drawing guns, and spectators throwing bottles at law enforcement. This event led to the installation of chicken wire fencing (and later barbed wire) to prevent future direct interactions between the crowd and the track. He also shows the various layers of fencing, including original chain-link from the 1970s and 80s, and points out an old tire that served as a base for a sign, with 'Arizona' brand tires mentioned as a potential age indicator.

Goal: Understand the events that led to increased safety measures and crowd separation.

What they say

Hide

he had a broken arm and finally two sheriffs came in and they pulled up right here and they're trying to get him away from the car it's still just burning in big flames they're trying to get him away from the car he doesn't want to get away from the car so he's pulling away from him and they put him in handcuffs people start throwing bottles at the sheriffs and the two sheriffs they're behind their squad cars with guns out tried to miss the bottles and then the next week that's where the chicken wire came from okay so all that happened on the track yes there were there's a burning exploding car on the track and police with their guns drawn getting bottles thrown at them while this car is like on fire blowing stuff out of the field way over there what the heck this place that's insane man if these you're the closest thing to these walls talking you know that okay like man there was no chicken wire this was here the rail yeah it was here so people could just fling bottles right and the cops were just trying to get him away from the car what year was that about late 80s wow so there's chicken wire but what about the actual barbed wire that like it goes over there and that came at a later date i believe that's just to keep people from hopping the fence is what that's for like uh like some of the nonsense that happened last week yeah because you know the the on that side the barbed wire goes towards the crowd so they're obviously not trying to keep people from going into the crowd they're trying to keep the crowd from coming out i kind of noticed that how this part is all sectioned off so if someone from the crowd wants to get up in the face of somebody here they either gotta go over the fence or walk all the way around there because even the pits are gated and you got security into the like into the staging lanes so it's very separate and i remember when uh the guardrail was in the pit and there was no chain link fence uh this chain-link fence here we'd drive our motorcycles right up here and just go right in if you didn't have to go around and i think i came here it was three dollars to get in it was 50 cents to race we're heading down to the end of the track with some more visible history but what was going on with the pavilions and stuff here uh the lights that are on the side right here there were no lights so most of the racing was done in the daytime it wasn't all they did a little bit at night but people got out here early and raced during the day not…

Auto-generated from the video audio.