That was 1991. Adair celebrated his 76th birthday while he was over there, but he showed few signs of slowing down. Between March and November of that year, he and his company helped extinguish 117 of the burning oil-well fires (out of an estimated 700). In between fighting fires, Adair flew to Washington to testify before the Gulf Pollution Task Force and also met with the president to discuss the challenges firefighters faced in Kuwait. He became one of the famous faces associated with the war, earning a number of accolades and appearances in the media. Now 87, Adair sold his company in 1993 and has been retired for a decade, but still offers his consulting services when needed. He still considers his role in putting out the Kuwaiti oil-well fires one of his greatest tasks and achievements. But if the United States attacks Iraq and Saddam’s troops set oil-well fires in their own country, Adair says the men he trained would face an even tougher–and much more dangerous–job putting out those fires. NEWSWEEK’s Jennifer Barrett spoke with Adair about that possibility. Excerpts:
NEWSWEEK: Do you think Saddam Hussein’s troops might try the same fire-setting tactics inside Iraq as they did in Kuwait should the U.S. launch an attack?
Red Adair: Nobody knows what Saddam’s going to do. Iraq has two tremendous oilfields, one in the north and one in the south. The southern field produces a reserve of at least 80 billion barrels of oil–it’s by far the biggest–while the north has about 15 billion barrels. Their natural gas reserves are way up in the trillions [110 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, according to the Energy Information Administration]. Something like that [setting fires] could take in the whole country. But you just can’t guess what Saddam would do. I wouldn’t assume anything. I would not be comfortable around that man. I think he is the world’s greatest liar, don’t you?
Well, I wouldn’t be comfortable around him. Then again, I wouldn’t be comfortable fighting a fire in an oil well, either. How would fighting oil fires in Iraq be different than it was in Kuwait in 1991?
It’s not like Kuwait over there. These are big fields. In Kuwait, it was one area and the wells were close together. In Iraq, they are all over. And the terrain is different. You’ve got swamplands and mountains and a little bit of everything. Also, the Iraqi wells are high-pressure wells. In Kuwait, there was very little pressure so there was very little gas. We were able to put those out with water. At one point, we were capping five wells a day. But even when we worked in Iraq last, about 25 years ago, we would take maybe a month on one well. And Saddam is still way behind on new technology in the oil industry–he is behind schedule on that.
Kuwait was easy compared to what would happen over in Iraq. I just hope it doesn’t happen.
So it would be significantly more dangerous to put out these fires in Iraq than it was in Kuwait–even if the area was secure?
Yeah, and some of that oil they produce in Iraq has a lot of gas in it. The wells have hydrogen sulfates [a type of sulfuric acid]. That will kill you–500 parts per million and you won’t last more than about 45 seconds. If you put it out when it’s burning it makes SO2–sulfur dioxide [exposure to which can affect the respiratory system]. That is pretty bad, but it’s not nearly as bad as hydrogen sulfide. You’ve got to wait to see what those wells have got in them until you can plan on anything. That’s the way I look at it.
What if there’s no way to tell until you get there?
You don’t even know what kind of equipment you’d need until Saddam does something. You just can’t guess. You’ve got to wait and see what he does. No question though, it would be a major job.
Do you think the U.S. firefighting teams could handle it?
I really don’t know. We’ll have to wait and see.
You fought oil-well fires all over the world, from the Sahara to the Gulf of Mexico, for more than 50 years before you retired. How many fires would you put out in a typical year?
It would vary–sometimes there’d be a 100 of them, sometimes 50. You never knew.
Even with all that experience, you described the situation in Kuwait in 1991 as “a monumental firefighting operation such as the world had never previously witnessed.” How did it differ from the oil fires you’d fought previously?
In Kuwait, the first thing we had to do was get water, then the equipment to pump the water, and then we had to find a machine shop in Kuwait city to fabricate everything else we needed and get it there. That was just to get ready. But there won’t be any comparison to Iraq.
You said that the two major problems you faced early on in Kuwait were lack of equipment and lack of water. Are we better equipped this time around?
No, ma’am, I don’t think so. You’ve got to get the equipment and the pumps to kill that well. That would all have to come from the United States or from Europe. You’d have to assemble all that equipment. There would be a lot of people involved, from mud supply to wellhead equipment to transportation.
How long do you think it would take just to get the equipment ready to fight fires in Iraq?
It’d take about a month just to get it all over there. By the time you fabricate everything you need and get the trucks and everything. It depends on the field you’re going to and the terrain. If it is in the mountain it would be really be rough.
What about booby traps or mines? How would you deal with that?
We went into a minefield in Kuwait, and I realized it and told them to stop. And we backed right on out of it. No one got hurt. But you have to worry about other things. I saw a man get shot once on a job in Sumatra. I wouldn’t jeopardize my men for any oilfields.
How has the equipment and training improved since you started fighting oil-well fires?
Well, the only way we’d train them was on the job. We just kept up. That’s how we trained. If we saw a failure in the equipment, we’d report it to that company and they’d fix it.
You were a real pioneer.
Yes, ma’am. We’ve come a long ways from when I started. It used to be 2,000 pounds of pressure in a well and we thought that was a lot of pressure. Now it’s 10,000 to 12,000 pounds of pressure. And they’ve gone deeper and the wells are bigger. It’s much more dangerous.
You’ve been officially retired for a decade. Do you ever miss fighting fires?
I keep track of what’s going on. You hear about these things and you always think you can do something. You want to help.
Would you go to Iraq if you were asked to do so?
I’d have to convince my wife to let me go first. She says, no way–that I’ve done enough of that in my lifetime.
