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The Aftermath: Fighting the Fires

Oil fires are easy to set, but extremely hard to put out.

The first predictions were that five years were needed to quench all Kuwait's oil fires. The government found this unacceptable and was prepared to spare no expense or effort to end the travesty within a year.

To fight the fires, a workforce of more than 10,000 men was mobilized. They were part of 27 teams from 10 countries and they included subcontractors from many other lands. The first arrivals landed on March 11 on the first air flight permitting civilians. On March 15, the first equipment was airlifted into Kuwait, and on March 16 the task began at the wells that had been cleared of land mines, UXO, and barbed wire.

The biggest wells gushed oil up into the air at more than 800 mph (1,290 kmh), and heat from the desert climate and oil fires turned the landscape into an inferno.

Different teams used different techniques to extinguish the fires and cap the wells, including blasting seawater from 1 million gallon lagoons with MIG jet engines and producing shockwaves with TNT.

The Wild Well Killers, Kuwait's oil well firefighting team, was formed in September. They extinguished their first well fire in 12 minutes to set a world record. The team had 31 members and achieved 41 fire extinctions.

In a ceremony on November 6 at the Burgan oil field, the Emir quenched the last oil fire. Kuwait’s sunlight had returned and the nine-month-long horror was over.

The firefighting had cost Kuwait US$1.5 billion. Without it, the oil fires had been estimated to last 100 years.