Montgomery County Agricultural fair-goers who slipped into the grand stands early Friday night to grab a front-row seat for the demolition derby witnessed a whole different kind of destruction.

"Firefighters!" one toddler screamed as several fire engines and ambulances backed out onto the muddy field.

"Wow, are they going to catch someone on fire?" his mother wondered.

But instead of battling a fire, the Burtonsville and Laurel volunteer fire-and-rescue squads geared up for a different kind of struggle: A fight to see which team could pull someone fastest out of a crushed car. The two fire squads competed in the first night of the Montgomery County Fire and Rescue's auto-extrication competition, a simulated car accident held annually at the fair.

The competition started more than a decade ago as a demonstration for fair-goers waiting for the demolition derby, said Sandy Spring Deputy Fire Chief Mike Kelley. But it soon transformed into a competition, because firefighters like to square off against each other, said Bill Rector, a lieutenant for the Burtonsville Volunteer Fire Department.

"Everything we do is a big competition," Rector said. "Every call is a big competition. You're always trying to beat the next company [to the scene]."

Setting the stage with a real person (usually someone on the squad) and a beat-up car, firefighters compete to rescue the person out of the driver's seat with the Jaws of Life and then rush the victim into an ambulance. The event is timed, and seconds are added onto the final time for missteps in safety, such as leaving a tool on the ground face up or not wearing gloves or a helmet, Kelley said.

The Burtonsville squad posted the winning time last year of about 18 minutes, said Buddy Sutton, the chief of the Laytonsville Volunteer Fire Department. Any extrication should last less than 20 minutes, Sutton said.

For the past several years, Burtonsville has been the team to beat. Their secret is practicing with the Jaws of Life in drills at least once or twice a week; most squads do the run-through once or twice a month, Rector said.

But even though firefighters like to win, the competition also offers all six of the county's fire squads a chance to strut their stuff, Sutton said.

This year the stakes were raised with the squads' very own "ICC," or inter-county competition. After two Montgomery County squads dropped out due to equipment complications, the Laurel Volunteer Fire Department in Prince George's County asked if it could join, said Glenn Butts, the deputy fire chief for Laytonsville.

As the new guys on the block, Laurel Cpt. Dan Dodd said his squad wanted to come out because "we don't get to do this very often."

While car crashes are common, Dodd said it's not always serious enough to require completely destroying the vehicle with the Jaws of Life.

Because of Prince George's various layers of fire departments, Sutton said each squad dusts off its Jaws of Life less frequently than in Montgomery County.

"On a daily basis, somewhere in Montgomery County, someone's got to be extricated out of a vehicle," he said.

But on Friday night, it seemed two Dodge Plymouth minivans were going to meet their maker at the hands of the Laurel and Burtonsville squads. (The Rockville, Laytonsville and Wheaton squads planned to square off Saturday, but they were canceled because of rain.)

On a command from the grand stand announcer, the firefighters rushed to rescue the victim, who was trapped and "unconscious" inside the van.

The teams first talked to the victim through a broken driver's seat window to assess the victim's stability.

After deciding the victim must be pulled out using the Jaws of Life, the teams worked to stabilize the vehicle—not an easy task in the mud, but a rather important one if its roof is going to be sawed off, noted the announcer.

Next a firefighter wriggled his way into the van's back seat and covered the victim in a thick blanket.

That's when the real chaos began.

In sweeping, synchronized motions, the firefighters smashed in all of the remaining windows, a firefighter sliced through the thick windshield with a saw and several others set about literally sawing off the van's doors, trunk and — finally — roof with a jackhammer-esque tool.

Each step seemed committed to muscle memory. But about 15 minutes into the competition, Burtonsville pulled ahead – a new convertible minivan to show for its efforts — while Laurel struggled with the passenger door.

Unfortunately, neither team had a chance to actually extricate a victim from a vehicle. A clap of thunder louder than the litany of power tools on the ground ended the competition and closed the fair Friday and Saturday night.

"It's disappointing," Sutton said. "A lot of hard work and dedication went into this."

While no new team was crowned champion for 2009, Butts said next year might more than make up for it. He's trying to plan a massive competition with fire and rescue squads from Prince George's, Montgomery, Howard and Frederick counties for next year's fair, he said.

And in a serendipitous event, Sutton said the Burtonsville squad was on its way home from the fair when a call came in for a real crash that required using the Jaws of Life. The team successfully removed the victims from their car, and they were taken to a local hospital for trauma injuries, Sutton said.

"They get a lot of, I guess you could call it practice, on the real stuff," he said. "It's terrible, but I guess it's why we're here."