Jim Bradshaw: Blazing well drew crowds, confused cows
They still happen occasionally, but gas well fires are not nearly as common as they were in earlier days in the oil field, and, it seems, not nearly so spectacular.
The “gasser” that caught fire near the Calcasieu Parish community of Iowa in July 1933, drew hundreds of people to see the spectacle, according to the Jennings newspaper. The paper in Welsh said thousands went to see it. The Associated Press didn’t give a number, but said cars were “streaming constantly” from Lake Charles to the site. News accounts differed on a few other superlatives, but agreed that the burning well was really something for the sightseers to see.
“Catching fire just before noon yesterday, the Shell Petroleum Company’s F. Heyd No. 4 well … soon became the mecca for thousands of sightseers who gazed with awe upon the flaming spectacle and marveled at the terrific force displayed,” the
Rice Belt Journal reported on July 14. “The column of flame is shooting more than a hundred feet in the air.”
“The wild gasser … has caused wild excitement.” The Jennings News said, “shooting a flame of gas two hundred feet into the air. … The giant torch can be seen for miles away and the reflection in the sky from the upheaval has been seen as far away as Morgan City, a hundred miles away, and as far away as Orange, Texas.
“Hundreds of Jennings people paid visits to the well at night, and marvel at the spectacle of the shooting flames and the almost deafening roar of the wild gas surging heavenward. … So bright is the flame that persons are able to read a newspaper as far away as the Old Spanish Trail, several miles from the well. … Houses, trees and fields for miles around the well are placed in a floodlight, brighter than day.”
Shell said the well “went wild” on June 25, when a jet of gas burst to the surface during boring for a core sample. It did not immediately catch fire, but “resisted all attempts to cap it” and sparks caused by gravel rushing up through the pipe finally set it on fire on July 13.
Nobody was hurt in the explosion that set the well on fire, but it blew a crater “as big as a normal house” around the well.
Kinney Brothers, described as “experienced wild well fighters from Tulsa,” were called in and the first thing they did was to fill the crater with mud to put out fires coming from cracks in the drilling pipe and to cool pieces of metal around the rig. The workers wore asbestos suits, but were still able to work near the fire for only a few minutes at a time because of heat so intense that it caused a wooden tool shed 150 feet from the fire to spontaneously catch fire.
“The tremendous heat … prevents an approach ,,, of less than a hundred yards,” the Associated Press reported, “but men going to the base of the flames … will be equipped with asbestos suits and streams of water will be played on them as they do their work.”
The next job for the asbestos clad workers was to build “a pulley arrangement on a cable strung between two poles … on either side of the well.” The firefighters planned to use this trolley to pull a big charge of dynamite over the well. They hoped the concussion from the exploding dynamite would suppress the well fire.
That worked, but only for a while. The well reignited before it could be capped.
The second time, according to the Rice Belt Journal, the firefighters built a runway to the edge of the well to be used to push “a large charge of nitroglycerine” into the crater to snuff out the flames. That did the trick.
A note in the Jennings News of July 18 reported, “The blazing Iowa gas fire was extinguished shortly before noon today by a powerful charge of nitroglycerin.” This time the Kinney Brothers crew was able to cap the well for good.
Nobody reported on how the people living in the area got through the weeks-long episode, but the News did report that cattle grazed at night “baffled by the phenomena” and that hens laid eggs “at night as well as in the daytime.”
You can contact Jim Bradshaw at jimbradshaw4321@gmail.com or P.O. Box 1121, Washington LA 70589.