Hellfighters [DVD]

Product Information

President Bush listened to his concerns and offered his support. Within weeks, Adair had the equipment he

Paul Neal “Red” Adair was an American oil well firefighter and one of the more famous men in the oil and gas business. He proudly spent his 76th birthday in Kuwait clad in his trademark red overalls, swinging valves into place atop out-of-control wells.On top of working in the field as much as he could, Red also designed and developed many different types of firefighting equipment. At the age of nineteen he had designed a lever that could haul coal from railroad cars. His equipment was so innovative, that he formed a separate company, The Red Adair Service and Marine Company, in 1972 to sell firefighting equipment to others in the industry. Red liked to rig bulldozers with special fittings to keep heat out. He would also fix long beams on the bulldozers and use those beams to put nitroglycerine into a blaze or even use those beams like a fixed crane to bring in heavy materials. One of Red's most famous designs was the semi-submersible firefighting vessel, used to fight offshore oil well fires. Red designed several ships for oil companies around the world, many of which are still in use today. the techniques involved large amounts of water and dirt. Adair also developed special equipment made

An explosion and resulting oil and gas fires destroyed Piper Alpha on July 6, 1988, and the blazing remains of the platform were eventually extinguished three weeks later by a team led by Red, despite reported conditions of 80 mph winds and 70-foot waves. Like any good performer, Adair saved his best feat for last. Many consider his crowning achievement to be his central role in containing the Kuwaiti oil field fires of 1991 that threatened planetary environmental consequences as well as incalculable lost revenues for oil producers. Following a scorched earth retreat policy, Saddam Hussein's defeated army set ablaze more than 700 of Kuwait's 1,000 oil wells. Adair was among the first responders, and his team squelched fires at 117 of the nation's most productive wells. Adair's expert advice to President Bush and military leaders helped shave months off of the containment project simply through better logistics and supply lines. Adair retired in 1993 and sold The Red Adair Service and Marine Company to Global Industries. His top employees (Brian Krause, Raymond Henry, Rich Hatteberg) left in 1994 and formed their own company, International Well Control (IWC).Mr. Adair, whose real name was Paul, founded the Red Adair Company in 1959 and is credited with battling more than 2,000 land and offshore oil well fires, including the hundreds of wells set afire when the Iraqi army retreated from Kuwait during the Persian Gulf war in 1991. Adair, who finally did retire in 1994 and sold his company, was instrumental in expediting the shipment of crucial supplies and equipment to Kuwait by testifying before the Gulf Pollution Task Force and meeting with then-President George H.W. Bush about the logistics of the firefighting operation.