Ali Asad likes to tell people he knows he's going to heaven because he's
already done his time in hell. Asad was on a team of oil well fire specialists
who worked on BG160, the biggest and wildest oil well fire in the Gulf War.
"It was the highest producing well in Kuwait. Cars were melting about 1,500
feet away. The flames reached more than 400 feet into the sky and the sound
of the well dashing out was unbelievable," recalls Asad.
Asad almost lost his life at BG160. He was moving in on the huge fire,
dressed in thermal underwear and fire retardant clothing. The crew had to
constantly spray Asad with water to keep him from burning up.
"There I was very close to the well, about 30 feet away. Suddenly the water
that was cooling me just stopped when the pumps failed," says Asad.
Asad felt the enormous heat cut right to his bones. He knew if he didn't
do something quickly he'd die.
"I felt I was roasting and I've never run so fast in my life," he says.
"The heat was so massive, I felt it in my bones. I knew I was going to die
in less than 40 seconds." Asad started running and didn't stop till he reached
the paramedic's truck.
The only thing that saved him was the truck, which was hurtling toward
him as fast as it could go. Asad was thrown into the back of the truck and
raced to a nearby pond to be dumped in.
At that point, everyone thought Asad might call it quits, but for some
reason he continued.
"Everyone thought I would back off then and quit the job, because I've
seen death so close to me," he says. "But I carried on and never quit. I'm
still not sure why."
Sharon McCoy was also in Kuwait during its raging firestorms. She accompanied
a group of oil well fire specialists who spent the next several months trying
to tame the blazes.
"It was quite an experience. I've never seen anything like it," she says,
still amazed years later. "When I think about it now, those guys
were up against a very big force."
McCoy remembers finding herself in front of TV news cameras on more than
one occasion.
"It was crazy, even back home. We would get all kinds of calls from people
offering suggestions on how we might put those fires out. One included driving
huge trucks onto the wells to snuff the flames out," she chuckles.
Since then, things have calmed down significantly. More prevention is practiced
on the oil field, says McCoy, so fires are rare. Nonetheless, it is still
a very dangerous job. "Not everyone can do it."
She says it can also be very lonely work, taking people away from their
families for extended periods of time. Crews will sometimes travel to foreign
countries like Kuwait, China and Saudi Arabia.
"I've seen a lot of Christmas parties cancelled because the guys were called
away on a job," says McCoy, who has worked with an oil well fire crew for
more than 20 years. "But they are a very tight-knit gang, they're like a family
themselves."
McCoy says firefighters might be called out to 65 to 75 jobs a year. While
that might not sound like a lot, each one presents unique problems and can
take serious effort to tackle.
"Sometimes a person will work eight to 10 hours straight with no breaks,
no lunch. It's a filthy job since you use liquid mud and you're almost always
wet," says Mark Morris, an oil well fire specialist.
If a blaze is full blown, the challenge to extinguish it is unreal, he
says.
"It's like trying to put a campfire out with one bucket of water. But when
you actually kill it, it's very rewarding," says Morris.
Most fires start with oil well blowouts. Blowouts are caused when the pressure
within the oil well is greater than the pressure in the ground around the
oil formation.
"Sometimes the pressure coming out of the ground will blow a mile of pipe
out," says Shane Cote, an oil well fire specialist.
"Just imagine a gas bubble about the size of a car with a ton of mud on
top of it. As the gas rises it expands, until the gas bubble is the size of
a house and under great pressure. When it surfaces, it's called a kick. If
it can't be controlled, it's called a blowout," says Cote.
It's an extremely dangerous situation because fire can be ignited almost
instantly.
"Since the drilling rig has large diesel engines and electric motors, it
can usually catch fire quickly," adds Cote.
Asad didn't expect to find himself fighting oil well fires when he took
basic fire training in Britain. He took a job with an oil company and, like
most oil well fire specialists, learned his skills on the job.
"It's not a fire that can be put out with just ordinary fire hoses and
pumper trucks. It requires so much more hard work and preparation," says Asad.
The main concern is the radiated heat that the well gives off.
Asad says it's tough leaving his wife and two daughters to go off and fight
dangerous fires. "It's like going off to war knowing you might not come back
alive."
But Asad admits he likes the danger and says he probably wouldn't be happy
doing anything else.
"I know it's crazy, but each one of us has that little tiny part in their
brain that pushes us to do something insane. I'm an adventurous person by
nature," he says.
And it runs in the family. Asad's father fought oil well fires too.
"My father taught me everything I know. He fought and controlled his first
oil well fire in 1962," says Asad.
The work is in his blood and doing something this challenging keeps him
happy and content.
"I enjoy the hard work and the challenge because when it's over I feel
I've really accomplished something," says Asad. "It helps me sleep better
at night."