Path: utzoo!utgpu!cunews!bnrgate!bwdls58!pdbain
From: pdbain@bwdls58.bnr.ca (Peter Bain)
Newsgroups: sci.space.shuttle
Subject: Re: oil well fires and shuttle tiles
Message-ID: <6093@bwdls58.bnr.ca>
Date: 18 Mar 91 16:07:07 GMT
References: <1991Mar14.151130.3822@welch.jhu.edu>
Sender: pdbain@bwdls58.bnr.ca
Reply-To: pdbain@bwdls58.bnr.ca (Peter Bain)
Organization: Bell-Northern Research, Ottawa, Canada
Lines: 23

In article <1991Mar14.151130.3822@welch.jhu.edu> jimh@welch.jhu.edu (Jim Hoffman) writes:
>Just an idea. Scince fire needs oxygen to live, why not smother the flames
>of the Middle East.  Build a dome structure that has shuttle tiles as the
>interior wall.  For one, the flame will smother on its own smoke and combine
>it with foam or water or what ever to cool it.  Two, the shuttle tiles 
>enable a smaller structure because of its ability to handle heat soooooooo
>well.  

Nice idea, but it turns out that extinguishing an oil-well fire is
easy: the people who do this for a living may extinguish a fire
several times in one day.  The way they do it is (1) detonate some
explosive (the old way) or (2) pump fire-extinguisher powder
(basically baking soda) into the plume at the rate of several hundred
pounds per SECOND (whoosh!).  They often re-light it intentionally to
reduce the explosion hazard.

You have missed the point somewhat, though.  The tricky part about oil
well fires is not the fire itself, it's actually capping the well.
The firefighters need to dig away until they find undamaged pipe, then
cut away the debris, then put on a valve.  This all takes time and
planning.  The technology required for this isn't space age:
conventional backhoes and bulldozers protected by roofing tin and
water sprays work just fine.