Girls Lift Tractor Off Dad: Adrenaline can Give Superhuman Strength to those in Dangerous Situations

Adrenaline can do some powerful things.

When two teenage girls found out their father was in trouble, they developed superhuman strength to get him out of harms way--known as adrenaline. 

According to the Albany Democrat-Herald, when Jeff Smith's tractor, which weighed more than 3,000 pounds, flipped over and pinned him to the ground, the Lebanon, Ore. Resident began screaming for help, only to find his two daughters, 16-year-old Hannah and 14-year-old Haylee, coming to the rescue. "We heard, 'Save me. Help me, God,'" Haylee said.

"We heard 'save me, help me,God,'" Haylee said, according to the New York Daily News.

"We just kind of braced ourselves on the tire and just lifted it up," Hannah told KPTV. That's when they got a little help from their friend adrenaline.

According to How Stuff Works, an amazing things happen when we face sudden danger. The brain's hypothalamus, a region of the brain that is responsible for maintaining the balance between stress and relaxation in the body, is stimulated, alerting dangerous surroundings and chemically signaling the adrenal glands that activate the sympathetic system. This, in turn, sends the body into an excited state where these glands release adrenaline to help confront the danger that raises hormone levels and increase heart rate. Digestion is then slowed and muscles are able to contract. 

"I don't know how I lifted it, it was just so heavy," she added. "And I could feel it, I could just feel all the weight. But we just did it. We both did."

They both lifted the tractor high enough so that he could squeeze his chest out.

"I was losing more and more breath every time I screamed," he said.

After calling 911, the pair hoisted the tractor enough for him to get his torso free. Hannah fetched a neighbor, who used his own tractor to pull Smith out.

Smith suffered a broken wrist and other injuries. 

He was taken to a local hospital, where he was treated for a broken wrist and other injuries.