Notebooks of Scott

Oil Well Fire via WikiMedia

Household oil fires are notoriously hard to put out, they are pools of fuel that are burning and pouring water on them is not a good idea. Now imagine a pipe from which thousands of gallons of highly flammable oil and gas are shooting out and immediately burning. These fires are typcally so hot that it is impossible to approach them without first cooling the ground around them and working under a continual spray of water. On top of this, every minute that the fire burns means more toxic smoke in the air, more toxic sludge on the ground, and more danger in putting it out. These factors all combine to give those men and women who fight oil well fires the name “HellFighters.”

So how do these HellFighters actually put out burning oil wells? The only way is to starve them of oxygen using methods ranging from blowing them out with concentrated streams of water, to dowsing them with flame retardant chemicals, to the most spectacular of methods, blowing them out with dynamite.

The original method for putting out burning oil wells is blasting them with dynamite. The basic idea behind this technique is simple, detonate an explosive in the heart of the fire and the resultant explosion will remove all the oxygen in the area and thus starve the fire. In practice, it is much harder. First the area must be cooled and all debris removed to prevent re-ignition. Then the firefighters must remove the crust of burned oil that has built up around the wellhead. It may sound easy, but they are working right next to a 3000 degree fire and must continually work behind heat shields and be cooled by streams of sprayed water. Once the area is clear, they have to maneuver highly volatile explosives into the heart of the fire without detonating them prematurely. Then they detonate them and put out the fire. Finished right? Nope, the firefighters then have to go in, remove the old wellhead, replace it with a new one, and then shut off the flow; all this with the oil still raining down on them and threatening a deadly explosion if even the least of sparks is made.

Needless to say, oil well fires are extremely dangerous and difficult to put out.

For More Information

• The Saftey Boss Oil Well Firefirghters
• Oil Well Fire via Wikipedia
• The Fires of Kuwait (Imax Film)

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