DAYTONA BEACH, Fla.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Within a few seconds after racecar driver Juan Pablo Montoya’s car slammed into the back of a jet dryer on turn three at the Daytona International Speedway Monday night, Cintas Fire Protection staff began working behind the scenes to support the firefighters who quickly extinguished the flames. Cintas Corporation (NASDAQ: CTAS) is one of the nation’s leading providers of fire protection services, including testing, inspection and training. Similar to how Cintas works with all Fire Protection customers, they had tested fire equipment prior to the event and prepared responders with the proper tools and equipment to deploy in the event that a fire occurred.
“This incident could have been much worse. Fortunately for everyone involved, the equipment went off without a hitch and deployed just as it was designed,” said John Rudy, Marketing Manager, Cintas Fire Protection. “Additionally, firefighters felt confident going into the blaze that they could trust the equipment and quickly address the situation based on their long standing relationship with Cintas.”
In an event seasoned broadcaster and former Daytona 500 winner Darrell Waltrip called the “most bizarre thing [he’s] ever seen,” the collision released approximately 200 gallons of jet engine fuel onto the raceway, creating a wall of flames. In addition to providing standard fire protection equipment such as portable and wheeled unit fire extinguishers, Cintas equipped responders with Fluorine Free Foam (FFF) and Purple K Dry Chemical Extinguishing Agent. In order to best prepare for emergencies, Cintas regularly tests the products to ensure their functionality. This allowed firefighters to extinguish the flames during Monday’s race in just 2.5 minutes – an extremely quick response time for a fire of that magnitude.
“Cintas has provided fire protection services and equipment to the raceway for more than eight years,” said Joe Wilson, Cintas Fire Protection Technician. “We regularly meet with the speedway’s internal firefighters and track personnel to help ensure fire equipment is in place and functioning properly in order to protect anyone in case of a fire, so when this happened, we were prepared.”
For more information on Cintas’ fire protection services for businesses, please visit http://www.cintas.com/Fire-Protection-Services/.
About Cintas Corporation:
Headquartered in Cincinnati, Cintas Corporation provides highly specialized services to businesses of all types primarily throughout North America. Cintas designs, manufactures and implements corporate identity uniform programs, and provides entrance mats, restroom supplies, promotional products, first aid, safety, fire protection products and services and document management services for approximately 900,000 businesses. Cintas is a publicly held company traded over the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the symbol CTAS, and is a component of the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index.