Grant County herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1850-1968, 1917-10-24
SAVED A BURNING OIL WELL

One Of the biggest and wickedest
"gassers" that ever struck despair to
the hearts of the men who tap the
earth for its treasures of energy rent
Louisiana rock last summer and in
stantly burst into flame. For six
days the blazing, roaring we'll con
tinued to waste natural gas at the rate
of 100000 cubic feet a day. Every
method of squelching the fire known
to the field experts was tried vainly
Then along came a man who knew
how to do it because he learned how
| in the New York fire department and
in five minutes the trick was done.
The man is William Guerin, former
| ly a deputy chief, now chairman of the
Fire Prevention Federation of Ameri-
ca He put out the "gasser" with
simple eXpedient that he remember
ed from his own experience ir fight
ing gas and oil fires in New YO.k city.
The sceptical LOuisianians let him try
it merely because he had gone so far
In five minutes they were throwing up
their hats and hugging him.
Mr.. Guerin modestly described his
fight with the fire as follows:
II arrived at the gasser early in the
morning. 1t could be heard at least
mile away. When | got closer / saw
that column of gas was shooting up
| from the remnant of the wrecked cas-
| ing for twenty or thirty feet 1t was
blue column, the pressure under
which it left the earth being so great
that it looked like liquid. At the
/ top of the column the flame began
spearing out in ball of fire and ris-
! ing between $50 and 200 feet. There
xTYrlc nO1yn Tc4 11n AoVo
ut struck me that this was merely
New York gas main fire on a big
scale and ] said to myself, Why not
tackle it in the same way?' When l
said that l might be able to put it out
with two streams of water one of the
gas company men laughed in a friend
ly way and said l must be affected by
the heat. All that water could do had
been done, he said The foreman said
the whole Ouachita river might be
pumped in without making any i'm
preston.
81 asked the manager, Sam Hunter,
| to put men behind two shields that
they had been using in their hose
operations, push the shields to with
in ten or fifteen feet of the well,
raise the pressure in the two seven
eighths of an inch nOzZles to forty or
fifty pounds and have the streams
played on the base of the we'll casing
so that they converged from an angle
OF 80 degrees.
''This was done. Then | had the
streams slowly raised up to and
through the column of gas until they
the base Of the glare. At this juncture
the men who were handling the hose
were ordered to squeeze their thumbs
against the stream at the nOzzles so
that the water would spread like a
fan. They followed instructions.
Striking the fame where it merged
with the column of gas, the water be-
came steam, the roar Of which ex-
ceeded that of the gas itself. lie fire
went out like a snuffed candle. The
stream had simply cut off the dame
from the gas. That's all there was
to it.
"The expression of establishment
and delight on the faces of the forty
or fifty men around the well cannot
/ be described They yelled, cheered,
clapped their hands and carried on
like demented persons. The whole
town turned out to see the man who
had extinguished a gas we'll fire with
water"