[Congressional Record Volume 162, Number 94 (Tuesday, June 14, 2016)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E912]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     TUESDAY'S IN TEXAS: RED ADAIR

                                 ______
                                 

                              HON. TED POE

                                of texas

                    in the house of representatives

                         Tuesday, June 14, 2016

  Mr. POE of Texas. Mr. Speaker, born the son of an Irish blacksmith in 
Houston, Paul Neal Adair, commonly known as ``Red'' started his long 
service as a fire fighter in World War II with the 139th Bomb Disposal 
Squadron. While enlisted, he was sent across Japan to find undetonated 
bombs and safely disarm them. However, it wasn't until after his 
service in the Army that he became renowned for his bravery and skill 
as a fire fighter.
   He began working under Myron Kinley, a pioneer and innovator in oil-
well firefighting. Adair worked diligently to learn the many new 
inventions and techniques Kinley had created, and by 1959 he was ready 
to strike out on his own. He founded the Red Adair Co., a private 
company solely devoted to fighting large scale oil fires, and over the 
course of his career he put out more than two thousand of these fires, 
both on land and on offshore platforms.
   In November of 1961, a particularly large fire, nicknamed the 
``Devil's Cigarette Lighter,'' broke out in the middle of the Algerian 
Sahara. Mr. Speaker, the flame was over four hundred and fifty feet 
high. Despite best efforts, the fire burned continuously, with no end 
in sight. That was, until Adair and his crew were called to the scene.
   Driving a modified bulldozer right up to the well where the fire was 
burning, Adair was able to get a large nitroglycerin charge into the 
well, allowing the explosion to displace enough oxygen that the monster 
of a fire was finally extinguished.
   His feats in the Sahara gained him and his crew a reputation 
worldwide. They additionally helped with a large gas leak off the coast 
of Australia, and contributed to capping the biggest oil well blowout 
to have ever been recorded in the North Sea.
   Even in 1991 at the age of seventy-five, Adair took part in the 
extinguishing of countless oil well fires that were set by Iraqi troops 
in Kuwait during the Gulf War. Soon after he retired, he sold his world 
famous company. His top employees went on to form their own company, 
the International Well Control. His great courage and success in his 
field led to a John Wayne movie called ``Hellfighters'' to be made, 
which was loosely based on his encounters in the Sahara. In 2004, at 
the age of eighty-nine, Paul Adair passed away, but both his men and 
many others will remember him as a pioneer in firefighting who not only 
saved many cities from millions of dollars in damages from these large 
scale oil fires, but also thousands of lives.
   And that's just the way it is.

                          ____________________