The Devil’s Cigarette Lighter – as the oil-well fire was dubbed – had been burning for almost six months far out in the sands of the Sahara.
Turning and twisting, the orange-red flame plumed 450ft (137m) into the air and was blown into fantastic shapes by the desert wind. It was visible for 100 miles (160km) in the central Algerian sky, and had seen by the American astronaut John Glenn as he orbited the globe in February 1962.
Gas was surging from a 13in (330mm) wide pipe faster than the speed of sound, so gas was 30ft (9m) in the air. The noise was a non-stop, thunderous roar. The desert floor trembled, and the sand sizzled like something frying in a pan. According to an eyewitness, ‘It was the nearest you could get to a living hell-on-earth!’
Trouble had started early in November 1961, when gas in the well had erupted, hurling out the steel drill pipe. Gas poured into the sky at a rate that would have supplied the needs of a city the size of Paris. There were no flames yet, just a high-powered jet of gas. But the threat that filled the minds of everyone watching was that a single spark would ignite an inferno.
The French owners of the well called on the world’s number one oil-well and gas-field trouble-shooter, the stocky Texan Red Adair, to deal with the emergency. Already occupied with a major fire in Mexico, Adair immediately sent two top assistants to the Gassi Touil oil and gas field, in the desert south-east of the Algerian capital, Algiers.
For seven days the Adair team pumped mud into the well to try to block the gas that was gushing out. Then, at noon on November 13, there was a violent explosion and the almost invisible column of gas caught fire. The cause was probably a spark of static electricity created by the constantly blowing sand.
It was now a job for Red Adair himself. At the age of 47, he had been fighting such fires for the past 24 years. His job was one of the most dangerous on Earth. Once on the scene, he realised that the fire, if left unchecked, could burn ceaselessly for up to 100 years.
To put out the fire – or ‘kill’ it in oil-field parlance – he had to deprive it of oxygen. To do this he would detonate a powerful explosive charge close to the flame. In effect, he planned to blow out the fire, just like blowing out the candles on a gigantic birthday cake.
It took five months to assemble all the equipment he needed, and have it flown to Algeria and then transported out into the desert. It was not until April 1962 that he and his team were ready to start work. By then the 30-man strong oil camp had grown into a settlement of some 500 as helpers and observes crowded in from all over the world. Bulldozers, pumps and lengths of iron pipe arrived daily by truck.
At the time of Algeria was waging a bitter war for its independence from France. As well as hiring a French interpreter, Adair employed guards armed with machine guns to defend him and his men in case they got caught up in the fighting between the controlling French army and Algerian nationalists. But the task in hand was his overriding concern.
First of all he needed water, which he and his assistants drilled for – creating a reservoir which could be used to pump water onto the blaze when it was needed. Then the seven-storey oil derrick – which the fire had reduced to 600 tons of charred, tangled steel – was dragged away by a vast water-cooled hook and a gigantic ‘rake’.
The next stage – setting and detonating the explosive – was far more tricky and dangerous. The only way Adair and his gang could work in any degree of safety was under tons of water falling constantly from eight huge nozzles – which were lined up like a battery of guns.
Shortly after eight o’clock on a Saturday morning. Adair – wearing high-necked red cotton overalls, a red safety helmet, red rubber boots and red flannel long johns, was ready. He had prepared a caterpillar tractor with a 50ft (15m) boom, welded to the end of which was a black iron drum wrapped in aluminium and asbestos.
Watched by scores of oilmen, firemen, policemen and nurses – and with two helicopters standing by to rush people to hospital if anything went wrong – he began to pack the drum with 550lb (250kg) of dynamite.
He next threaded detonator caps and write into the drum. The wire led to a trench 200yds (180m) from the fire, in which a blaster would set off the explosion.
The sun was blazing down when, at about nine o’clock, Adair took the controls and the machine lumbered forward like some long-necked prehistoric monster into the downpour of water from the eight pumps.
Picture Credit : Google