Red Adair: Saving Oil Wells From Hell on Earth

“There isn’t a fire that I can’t put out.” —Red Adair, The Independent (July 1988)

“Nature causes more catastrophes than man, so we may be overdoing all this ecology business. The good Lord put oil and gas there for us to find and use, and we’d better do it.”

—Paul Neal “Red” Adair

(People, May 23, 1977, quoted and cited in Lifset et al.)

Paul Neal Adair, known as Red Adair, was a larger-than-life figure in the oil and gas industry. His work was not only daring and heroic but also crucial to the functioning of the industry. He was a pioneer in the field of oil well firefighting, a profession that emerged in response to the inherent dangers of drilling for oil and gas. Adair's fearless approach and innovative techniques saved the industry, insurance companies, and ultimately consumers millions of dollars by tackling nearly 3,000 wild wells and extinguishing dangerous and costly well fires.

A wild well or oil well blowout is “a well that has blown out of control and from which oil, water, or gas is escaping with great force to the surface” (Oil and Gas Field Technical Terms Glossary) and which escape “is not intended and cannot be controlled by equipment used in normal drilling practice” (Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code §127.001(5)).

Uncontrolled oil wells are hazardous as they can cause severe injuries to those around them—workers and the population—and a single spark can light a fire that can burn for days or months, causing further damage to the well, the site, and the environment. The fire can reach such high temperatures that it becomes incredibly challenging and risky to fight it.

Philip Singerman, the author of Adair’s authorized biography, describes oil well blowouts vividly in his book and the terror they generate in otherwise strong, courageous men:

First came the scream of escaping gas, a piercing, paralyzing scream, the scream of a thousand nightmares, as terrifying as the roar of an angry jungle cat six feet from your tent. It was a scream that turned the world around it into nothing but sound, ripping through a man’s nervous system, riveting him to his boots, pinning him to his mattress, sucking the breath from his lungs. Hear it once and you’ll never rest easy on a drilling rig again—if you’re lucky enough to be alive for another chance. (p. 3)

The story of Red Adair is the rags-to-riches story of a little Texan boy who wanted to “do something big” with his life and who succeeded through the sheer force of will after facing poverty and several setbacks.

Red Adair was born in Houston, Texas, on June 18, 1915. He had four brothers and three sisters. His father was a blacksmith who lost his shop during the Great Depression. The family was very poor, and Red’s mother was often sick. When he was 6, Red and his twin sisters were sent to an orphanage while their mother was recuperating from TB and their older sister was taking care of their brothers. There, he learned how to fight to defend himself against school bullies.

As a teenager, he participated in organized fights with boxers much stronger than he was to be able to make some extra money—and he won, notably refusing to give up, even after his opponent broke his jaw once, because he needed the money so badly (Singerman, p. 31). His biographer reports that he was always hungry and rarely had enough to eat (pp. 77, 87, 91, 98-99, 102, 107).

From an early age, Red harbored dreams of achieving something significant. He aspired to attend college, play football, and become a football coach. However, at the age of 14, he was forced to drop out of high school to support his family after his father lost his shop. Despite this setback, Red's determination remained unshaken.

He started as a delivery boy for drugstores and worked hard, including by regularly fixing an old, rusty bike he acquired for a dollar to be able to make deliveries. One day, though, another boy showed up at the drugstore and got his job because he had a brand new bike that wouldn’t break constantly like Red’s.

At the age of 6, Red witnessed his first well fire and was immediately captivated. His first job in the oil industry wouldn't come until 1938. In 1941, he began working for Myron Kinley on a per-job basis. Kinley, the recognized expert in fighting oil well fires at the time, saw Adair's talent and passion and hired him full-time in 1946. This was the beginning of a career that would see Adair facing dangerous situations with unwavering courage.

After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Adair was determined to serve his country and attempted to enlist in the U.S. Army. However, he was rejected due to a hernia. Undeterred, he tried again and, this time, was told that he would be accepted if he underwent surgery, so he did. His resilience in the face of rejection was a testament to his determination.

In 1959, Adair founded the Red Adair Company with just $10,000 (Singerman, p. 250). One of the company's distinctive features was that almost everything was red, including the red coveralls he and his team wore at work sites. His office also had a red chair, a red phone, and a red carpet (Haselburst, p. 13).

Adair faced his first oil well blowout in 1940 in Smackover, Arkansas. Throughout his career, he traveled around the world to fight wild wells, including in countries where revolutions were taking place or with extreme weather conditions.

Adair faced one of his most formidable wild wells in the Sahara Desert in Algeria in the early 1960s, and that’s when his name began to gain international recognition. The well fire was nicknamed the “Devil’s Cigarette Lighter” after it created a flame of more than 700 feet that John Glenn said he could see from space.

In the late 1970s, in Canada, Adair worked on a blowout of poisonous hydrogen sulfide gas with the outside temperature at 50 degrees Fahrenheit below zero.

In 1988, at 73, he was called to help after the Piper Alpha offshore platform caught fire and became the worst oil disaster in the history of the North Sea.

In the 1990s, Adair and his team were among 27 teams sent to Kuwait to help extinguish oil wells set on fire by the Iraqis. Over 700 oil well fires had created a “cloud of poisonous gas … two miles high and stretched out for 450 miles. … Every day, six million barrels of oil went up in smoke” (Haselburst, p. 41; Knight). Adair and his team extinguished 117 well fires in just five months, while it had been estimated that it would take 3 to 5 years to do (Haselburst, p. 45).

Adair sold his company in 1993 and became a consultant.

He died on August 7, 2004, 20 years ago, at the age of 89.

His language was sometimes colorful. He wasn’t perfect (but who is?). His early years living in poverty, then the job he lost at the drugstore, and how hard it was for him to finally find one in the oil patch seem to have had a strong effect on him, adding to an already strong work ethic and desire to succeed. Once he started earning a lot of money, he bought luxury cars for himself and his wife Kemmie, as well as racing cars and, later, racing boats.

Reading in detail about the well fires Adair fought, the temperatures, the risks, the melting shoes, hats, car tires, etc., it is hard not to think of hell—both figuratively and literally—and hell he fought and defeated.

“I've done made a deal with the devil. He said he's going to give me an air-conditioned place when I go down there, if I go there, so I won't put all the fires out.”

(Quoted in Associated Press)

The little boy from Houston did something pretty unique with his life.

Values: Innovation, Safety, Ambition, Competitiveness, Leadership, Generosity.

Virtues: Growth mindset, Perseverance, Meticulousness, Grit, Hard Work, Favoring Taking Action, Determination, Confidence, Merit, Humility, Loyalty.

Arrival of Red Adair (the famous firefighter) at Schiphol Airport, Netherlands - Author: Harry Pot / Anefo - Nationaal Archief - 9 June 1964 - License: CC BY-SA 3.0 nl

[Note: This article has been difficult to write and took me way more time than I expected for several reasons that I will not list here. I still hope it will give you a good overview of Adair's achievement and hopefully satisfactorily pay homage to it. As always, feedback is welcome.]

Innovation: Making the Oil Patch Safer

Two recurrent values in Adair’s story that go hand in hand are innovation and safety. Adair's innovative approach to improving safety in the oil industry is truly inspiring. He was always thinking of ways to make his and his team’s work more efficient, easier, and safer. To accomplish this, he needed a growth mindset, knowing to seize every opportunity to learn and improve, and being extraordinarily meticulous and persistent. Throughout his career, he invented and built many tools that his industry would then use. He carefully studied each well before drawing a plan of attack, and he wanted to ensure that the equipment he and his team used worked perfectly, for safety’s sake.

When he was a little kid, he witnessed his first oil well fire from afar. Older kids explained to him that these kinds of fires sometimes couldn’t be extinguished. He immediately insisted that he would be able to do it and came up with an idea—an early version of the Athey wagon (Singerman, p. 73).

In the early days of oil-well firefighting, when Myron Kinley, who became Adair’s mentor, started working, there was no proper protective clothing or safety measures to protect firefighters working in the oil patch adequately. The use of explosives to extinguish well fires had also not been perfected. Adair changed all that:

Through his company, Red developed modern wild-well control guidelines and safety rules. He pioneered the use of semisubmersible firefighting vessels to fight wild wells out in the ocean. The cranes and over tools that Red developed are considered to be the best in the business. All can be adapted to suit specific kinds of fire, and all are designed to protect the people who are facing the fires. (Haselburst, p. 15)

Adair developed and perfected the “Athey wagon,” a crane operated with a bulldozer and a very long boom, which could be used to remove the debris after a blowout and place explosives more precisely. The bulldozer was equipped with a heat shield to protect the driver. Singerman described how Adair worked on the Athey wagon:

Red first built one on a job in 1941 when the rig hands at a well fire told him there was no way to get near the blazing wellhead to remove a twisted valve. Red spied a two-wheeled wagon on the location, got a length of drill pipe and a large hook, and had a welder mount the pipe on the wagon and the hook on the end of the pipe. Pushing the wagon by hand, he then worked his way up to the wellhead and basically went fishing until he snagged the valve. Over the years, Red refined his original design considerably, substituting wheels for tracks and adding remote controls that allow a dozer operator to maneuver the boom and the hook from his seat atop the Cat, but the driver still has his hands full. (p. 208)

His attention to detail and, to some extent, his sometimes controlling attitude probably saved his and others’ lives many times. The only time he was hurt to the point of being hospitalized was when he trusted a worker who proved to be inebriated from the previous night.

“Christ almighty, it isn’t any damn well that’s gonna get my ass blown away, it’s the human beings I keep having to contend with.”

(Quoted in Singerman, p. 68)

His plans of action always came with a way out, a testament to his meticulous planning and commitment to safety:

“You don’t ever go in someplace before you figure out how the hell you’re gonna get your ass back out. Then you just go on about your work, try to do it right, and don’t worry.”

(Singerman, p. 26)

On the “Devil’s Cigarette Lighter” site, he asked the oilman driving the car to take him and two engineers closer to the site to get so close that the other passengers became uncomfortably fearful. But he didn’t want to leave anything to chance:

“Closer,” Adair hollered, flicking an index finger in the direction of the well as though he were casting for trout. “Jesus Christ, Red,” screamed the oilman, gripping the steering wheel that was now humming in tune with the floorboards, “we can see the bastard from right here just fine.” “I want a closer look,” Adair yelled. “I want to know what I’m dealing with.” (Singerman, p. 30)

“Those who only knew of Red Adair often thought of him as a daredevil, but those who worked with him knew different,” Singerman explained. “Red was extremely careful and would never jeopardize the safety of his men” (p. 63).

Source: AZ Quote

In the early 1940s, Adair and Kinley also worked on better using directional explosives to extinguish well fires with more precision. Adair didn’t stop there. He created ‘shaped charges’ that were called ‘flying saucers’ “to orchestrate enormous detonations with surgical precision” (Singerman, p. 166).

Ambition and Competitiveness: Rage de Vivre (Zeal for Living)

As I read about Red Adair’s story, a French expression came to mind: “la rage de vivre”—literally “a rage/zeal for living.” This phrase encapsulates Adair's relentless determination and resilience. It signifies his fierce passion for life, his refusal to be defeated by circumstances, and his unwavering commitment to the job at hand. Born into an impoverished family, he faced several setbacks, which only increased his grit. But his circumstances alone did not create it. At a young age, he had set his mind on “doing something big” and even had a plan (going to college and becoming a football coach).

Throughout his life experiences, including growing up poor and hungry, having to drop out of school to work to help support his family, losing jobs, quitting unfulfilling ones without another one lined up, and, of course, fighting hell on earth, his main traits of character helped him sustain his ambition and win. He was an incredibly hard worker. He always had a plan but favored action over talk. He was confident he could make it and determined to do so. And he did.

He remembered seeing the glowing sky then, before anyone had known who he was, or anyone except himself had known what he could do. Young as he was he had known even then he would do something—something big—something more than what he saw around him in the tiny houses, on the dirt streets, on the edge of Houston. (Singerman, p. 70)

Red Adair's journey was not without its share of setbacks. However, what set him apart was his ability to learn from these experiences. On two occasions, he showed a willingness to take responsibility for his mistakes and learn from them. This resilience and determination to grow from adversity is a powerful lesson.

As a delivery boy, he needed a bike to make deliveries for the drugstore he worked at. He found an old one he was able to buy for one dollar. The bike was so rusted that it continually broke. One day, as Adair came back to the drugstore late and covered with grease after repairing the bike, he was told that his job had been given to someone else who had “a brand new bike” and would hence be able to make the deliveries faster: “Red stared impassively at the owner. Inside he was furious, hurt, and embarrassed, but he would show no emotion. He turned and left the store” (Singerman, pp. 95-96).

Before finding a way to work in the oil industry, he found work at a railroad shop, where most of his job consisted of cleaning the machinery. He was well-paid, but after some time, “there was nothing new about his job, and as the years went by, the sameness of the days began to gnaw at him” (Singerman, p. 109). So, he decided to quit—without finding another job first but knowing that if he wanted to do something with his life, he couldn’t simply wait for a better opportunity. He had to actively seek his chance to work in the oil field.

“See, once I finally got into the oil field, I never sat and waited for jobs or people to come to me. I went out and got 'em, because I waited at the railroad shop too damn long. That's what cured me of that. And in the oil patch, I never, ever, took anything for granted either, because before the railroad shop, when I worked in the drugstore, I thought I had it made and along comes this other guy with a better bicycle than mine and he took my job. I said that ain't never going to happen to me again.”

(Quoted in Singerman, p. 93)

Once he started working in the oil patch, Adair continued to show determination and grit and never let a wild well get the best of him. In 1941, he was thrown into the air more than 75 feet and landed back on his feet. He is said to have commented: “Wow, that was some ride!” (Haselburst, p. 18)

Photo by Provincial Archives of Alberta on Unsplash

He was always determined to “beat the wild well.” He would get as close to the well as possible—and sometimes it meant so close that his shoe soles would start melting (Singerman, p. 52)—to figure out exactly what was going on in order to come up with the best plan:

“You form a battle plan, gather your men and equipment, and attack. You have only one thought in mind: you will do what it takes to win.”

(Quoted in Haselburst, p. 29)

He was such an incredibly hard worker that even after the few times he was injured, he got back to work quickly. In 1978, while working on the Canadian hydrogen sulfide gas well blowout, his air tank was punctured, and he had to be dragged away from the well (the smell is eventually lethal). He returned to work the following day (Haselburst, pp. 33-34).

Adair beat poverty, too. His expertise and reputation for excellence and effectiveness in a job whose results were unpredictable allowed him to be well-paid, “sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars for a single job, and occasionally over a million” (Singerman, p. 15). This success was not handed to him but resulted from his unwavering determination and incredibly hard work. He became so good that, except for the rare times when he would be waiting for a job, more often than not, he was going from one job to another, sometimes leaving one side of the world one night to start a new job on the other side the other. Singerman described Adair in such a situation as “running on pure adrenaline, ready to operate for weeks now on no more than four hours of sleep a night” (p. 46).

Red Adair's competitiveness was not just about winning but about his eagerness to face challenges head-on and solve problems with action: “He thrived on hard work, on the rush of facing off against a burning well and the challenge of defeating it and had spent a lifetime proving himself by doing something, not talking about it” (Singerman, p. 16).

Adair quickly understood that every job was an opportunity to learn, that he would likely be able to use later to his advantage. When he first started in the oil patch, he stayed after hours to disassemble, clean, and study the pieces of machinery and take meticulous notes on their use. Later, on jobs, he got as near to a fire as possible—on foot, by car, or by helicopter—to look closely at the situation and often sketch what it looked like and his action plan.

Leadership: Showing the Way

Leadership is not mentioned anywhere related to Adair, but it represents several traits and attitudes that Adair exemplified.

When he faced the Devil’s Cigarette Lighter, as if the fire itself wasn’t enough, the men working on extinguishing it were of different nationalities. They tended not to get along very well because of Algeria’s history and geopolitics. So Adair gathered everyone before they started working on the well to give them a unifying message, asking them to set their differences aside in order to beat the common enemy that was the well fire (Singerman, pp. 54-55).

Adair was fearless, loved a challenge, and was always eager to take on new burning wells, especially since not a single well had resisted him. He explained that many considered him a daredevil, but he was anything but. His fearlessness, coupled with meticulous preparation and plans to take on wild wells, denoted a calculated risk approach. This fearlessness is not just inspiring, but also a key aspect of his leadership style.

On his flight to Piper Alpha in the North Sea, a flight attendant asked him, “Are you ever afraid?” He answered, “No, never afraid, just very careful” (Singerman, p. 25).

He was confident that he could do the jobs he was asked to do yet humble in the sense that he was always learning and always prepared. He wasn’t bragging; he just knew what he could accomplish. According to Singerman, he was uncomfortable talking about his accomplishments and spoke about himself in the second person (p. 26).

Arguably, it is hard to be a leader when the stakes are so high. Good leadership implies letting your people do their job after setting the expectations and being there in support rather than in action. But oil well firefighting is—and was even more then—a dangerous job, with unpredictable situations, and where human error costs lives. Fearlessness and confidence based on meticulous preparation enabled him to lead by example: “You don’t fear your job. You respect it. You know your equipment and your men and you don’t trust anybody but yourself” (Singerman, p. 26). He did trust the men he took with him on jobs though.

Red Adair’s language was sometimes colorful, and he was straightforward. He also understood the importance of teamwork—for the sake of efficiency and safety. He wanted to learn about the customs of the countries he was called to work in to avoid offending their inhabitants (Singerman, p. 47). When he was in Japan, he made sure to treat the Japanese well, even though the United States had just won the war against them. His respect for different cultures, even in the face of historical conflict, is a testament to his understanding that treating people well can make you go much farther in your endeavors.

Adair was not into drama or politics. It’s also important to note that with a single exception, I found nothing indicating that Adair lobbied the government for anything, including more safety regulations. Instead, he insisted on keeping his men safe himself and was very proud to say that no one on his team ever died or was seriously injured. He actively invented tools and devices that made his work safer instead of waiting for or asking the government to protect them. [The only exception was his meeting with George H. W. Bush after he had surveyed the extent of the work to be done in Kuwait in the early 1990s, where he was sent to extinguish wells put on fire by the Iraqis. He explained what his team and others would need to be able to do the job, which he obtained.]

Singerman told a funny anecdote about Adair’s encounter with an OSHA employee who insisted on Adair following government rules. Calmly, Adair led him to reason:

Another time, this safety engineer from OSHA came on a job I was doing for Pacific Gas and Electric in California and told me we couldn't wear our tin hats. He said we had to wear plastic safety hats. That was the rule. I said, “The work we do, it gets too hot for plastic hats.” He said, “That's ridiculous.” I said, “C’mon and take a walk with me a minute.” I took that dude down as close to the fire as he could stand it and stood there with him and that plastic hat of his began to melt and run down over his ears. He damn near shit in his pants and he said, “well, I see your point. I guess we'll have to have a special ruling this.” (p. 290)

He was persistent and focused on the job at hand. He never saw obstacles, such as the lack of water near a well on fire, as anything more than an additional challenge to overcome—he would find a solution, and he did (Singerman, p. 53).

Adair not only cared about the safety of his men, but he also seemed to be replicating his mentor/mentee relationship with Kinley with his employees. Singerman explained how Adair “treated Boots like a son,” even though he was a “constant source of friction” for him (p. 199). This is also why he was very disappointed and deeply hurt when Boots and Coots, two of the men he had taught wild well fighting, just quit and started their own company when he refused to agree to their demands and then apparently spread rumors about Adair’s retiring or getting out of business.

Adair had been extremely loyal to his mentor Kinley (Singerman, p. 244), staying with him years after it would have been time for Adair to leave because Kinley couldn’t do the work as he used to anymore. At this point, Adair was handling most of the work, covering for Kinley without taking full credit so as not to embarrass his mentor (Singerman, pp. 206, 235, 238). He expected the same kind of loyalty from Boots and Coots. It wasn’t so much that they would want to start their own company, but rather that they seemed to have done that with little respect for what they had been able to learn from him: “He felt something inside him was broken that had nothing to do with his body. He felt tired and lonely. He felt betrayed” (p. 307).

“I’d like to be remembered as a man who gave everybody an even break. If I ever gyp anybody in my life, I didn't do it intentionally. I’d also like to be thought of as somebody who respected his fellow men—who respected another man's work—too many people don't do that... They all seem so cut-throat nowadays, and they shouldn't be.”

(Quoted in Singerman, p. 206)

Adair considered his employees as his second family and had a meritocratic vision of advancement, which mirrored his own experience:

It's a simple system, really. A man begins his career at the Red Adair Company at the very bottom and if he works hard, keeps his mouth shut, shows some initiative, and fits into the Red Adair satellite system, he moves on up the line. (Singerman, p. 270)

Generosity

His fearlessness in front of well fires that could only make you think you had arrived in hell may have made him look tough, but he was also a generous man, literally and figuratively.

Adair donated money and, after his semi-retirement, time to many charities dedicated to children, especially children with severe burns. Some of these charities included the Easter Seals Society, the Muscular Dystrophy Association, the Epilepsy Association, and the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation (Haselburst, p. 45). One time, Adair made a $25,000 check directly to a neighbor he knew worked with the Texas Children’s Hospital, even though he could not deduct the money from his taxes by making it to his neighbor instead of the hospital. But that wasn’t why he made the check; he focused on helping children, and this seemed easier for him (Singerman, p. 266).

When a European community offered to buy him a Mercedes as a thank-you after he completed a job there, he told the community to use the money to donate to a hospital treating badly burnt children instead (Singerman, p. 214).

Adair had become friends with Rush Johnson, the head of a loss adjustment firm, which contracted for Lloyd’s of London. Johnson explained that Adair was always trying to salvage anything he could while doing a job, such as pulling drilling rigs away from the fire and saving the insurance company millions of dollars, so he never argued about the bill Adair sent for doing a job. But sometimes, Adair “did a job for nothing for an independent oil man in danger of going under” (Singerman, pp. 205, 250).

His daughter explained that he wasn’t always present for important life milestones for his family or friends, but he was always there if any of them needed them.

Conclusion

Red Adair was fearless in front of well fires and developed a very thick skin, likely due to his childhood and young adult experiences. Yet, he cared deeply about his family, even if he didn’t always show it well. He also cared very much about his employees. To quote his wife, when she compared him to John Wayne, “tough guys on the outside, but soft on the inside” (Singerman, p. 275).

He loved action, working hard, and doing a job well the first time, and he loved what he was doing for a living. Read any description of a well blowout in Singerman’s biography, and it’s hard not to be amazed by what the little boy from Texas has accomplished: He faced nearly 3,000 wild wells without fear; he fought them with tools he invented without going to college; he controlled wild wells and extinguished well fires with no loss of life on his team and no significant injuries while saving money to the industry.

Adair's humility was always present, no matter how far he had come: “I never thought I would be in a place like this in my life—I am just a country boy from Texas,” he told the U.S. House of Representatives, Ad Hoc Select Committee on Outer Continental Shelf when he testified before Congress in 1977 (p. 875).

In an episode dedicated to Red Adair, one of the hosts of the Come and Take It podcast commented:

It’s a great example of the modern Texan mindset: the boastfulness, the swagger, that “I will get the job done,” but having the wherewithal and the professionalism to actually back that up.

I couldn’t agree with this more.

Sources

Ad Hoc Select Committee on Outer Continental Shelf. (1977). Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act Amendments of 1977. U.S. House of Representatives.

Associated Press. (2004, August 8). Red Adair, Oil-Well Firefighter, Dies at 89. NBC News.

Clancy, CJ. (2021, June 2). Red Adair: The World Famous Oil Well Firefighter and Son of an Irish Immigrant. Irish Central.

“Fighting Oil Well Fires Propelled Red Adair to Celebrity Status.” (2016, June 10). Houston Chronicle."

Haselburst, Maureen. (2004). Red Adair: The Story of an Oil Well Fighter. Pacific Learning.

“Hellfighters,” with John Wayne and directed by Andrew V. McLaglen, 1968.

Knight, Gib. (2024, August 7). Hellfighters – The Red Adair Story. Oklahoma Minerals.

Lifset, Robert, Raechel Lutz, and Sarah Stanford-McIntyre. (2023). American Energy Cinema.

MacRae, Michael. (2012, December 12). Red Adair to the Rescue. The American Society of Mechanical Engineers.

“Red Adair,” August 13, 2018, Come and Take It podcast.

Singerman, Philip. (1989). Red Adair: An American Hero – The Authorized Biography. Bloomsbury.

Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code §127.001(5).

Oil & Gas Field Technical Terms Glossary. (n.d.). Wild Well.