We revisit the issue of Lagrangian irreversibility in the context of recent results [H. Xu, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 111, 7558 (2014)PNASA60027-842410.1073/pnas.1321682111] on flight-crash events in turbulent flows and show how extreme events in the Eulerian dissipation statistics are related to the statistics of power fluctuations for tracer trajectories. Surprisingly, we find that particle trajectories in intense dissipation zones are dominated by energy gains sharper than energy losses, contrary to flight crashes, through a pressure-gradient driven take-off phenomenon. Our conclusions are rationalized by analyzing data from simulations of three-dimensional intermittent turbulence, as well as from nonintermittent decimated flows. Lagrangian irreversibility is found to persist even in the latter case, wherein fluctuations of the dissipation rate are shown to be relatively mild and to follow probability distribution functions with exponential tails. © 2020 American Physical Society. ©2020 American Physical Society.