because his hair was bright red. The color became a trademark for Adair. He wore red clothes and red boots. He drove a red car, and his crew members used red trucks and red equipment.
During World War Two, Adair served on a trained army team that removed and destroyed
bombs. After the war, he returned to Houston and took a job with Myron Kinley. At the time, Kinley was the leader in putting out fires in oil wells. Red Adair worked with Myron Kinley for fourteen years. But in nineteen fifty-nine, Adair started his own company.
During his thirty-six years in business, Red Adair and his crews battled more than two
thousand fires all over the world. Some were on land. Others were on ocean oil-drilling structures. Some fires were in burning oil wells. Others were in natural gas wells.
Red Adair was a leader in a specialized and extremely dangerous profession. Putting out oil
well fires can be difficult. This is because oil well fires are extinguished, or put out, at the
wellhead just above ground. Normally, explosives are used to stop the fire from burning. The explosion robs the fire of oxygen. But, once the fire is out, the well still needs to be covered, or capped, to stop the flow of oil. This is the most dangerous part of the process. Any new heat or fire could cause the leaking well and the surrounding area to explode.
Red Adair developed modern methods to extinguish and cover burning oil wells.
They became known in the industry as Wild Well Control techniques. In addition to explosives, the techniques involved large amounts of water and dirt. Adair also developed special equipment made of bronze metal to help extinguish oil well fires. The modern tools and his Wild Well
Control techniques earned Red Adair and his crews the honor of being called the "best in the
business."
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Red Adair was known for not being afraid. He was also known for his sense of calm and
safety. None of his workers were ever killed while putting out oil well or gas fires. He described his work this way: ―It scares you—all the noise, the rattling, the shaking. But the look on
everyone's face, when you are finished and packing, it is the best smile in the world; and there is nobody hurt, and the well is under control.‖
One of Red Adair's most important projects was in nineteen sixty-two. He and his crew put
out a natural gas fire in the Sahara Desert in Algeria. The fire had been burning for six months. This famous fire was called the "Devil's Cigarette Lighter." Fire from the natural gas well shot
about one hundred forty meters into the air. The fire was so big that American astronaut John
Glenn could see it from space as he orbited Earth.The desert sand around the well had melted into glass from the extreme heat. News reports said Adair used about three hundred forty kilograms of nitroglycerine explosive material to pull the oxygen out of the fire.
Adair's success with the "Devil's Cigarette Lighter" and earlier well fires captured the
imagination of the American film industry. In nineteen sixty-eight, Hollywood made an action
film called Hellfighters. It was loosely based on events in Red Adair's life. Actor John Wayne
played an oil well firefighter from Houston, Texas whose life was similar to Adair's. Adair served as an advisor to Wayne while the film was being made. The two men became close friends. Adair said one of the best honors in the world was to have John Wayne play him in a movie.
In nineteen eighty-eight, Adair fought what was possibly the world's worst off-shore accident.
It was at the Piper Alpha drilling structure in the North Sea. Occidental Petroleum operated the structure off the coast of Scotland. The structure produced oil and gas from twenty-four wells.
One hundred sixty-seven men were killed when the structure exploded after a gas leak. Red
Adair had to stop the fires and cap the wells. He faced winds blowing more than one hundred
twenty kilometers an hour, and ocean waves at least twenty meters high.
In March of nineteen ninety-one, Red Adair went to Kuwait following the Persian Gulf War. He and his crews were called in to help put out fires set by the Iraqi army.
The Red Adair Company capped more than one hundred wells. His crews were among
twenty-seven teams from sixteen countries called in to fight the fires. The crews' efforts put out about seven hundred Kuwaiti fires. Their efforts saved millions of barrels of oil. Some experts say the operation also helped prevent an environmental tragedy. The job had been expected to take three to five years. However, it was completed in just eight months.
Red Adair had spent his seventy-sixth birthday in Kuwait working side by side with his crew.
When asked when he might retire, he told reporters: "Retire? I do not know what that word means. As long as a man is able to work, and he is productive out there and he feels good—keep at it."