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BLOWING OUT THE FIRES OF PéLéE((?))

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A raging inferno in the Texas oil fields where one workman lost his life before Mack Kinley could get his dynamite "blower" to work.

IN the Midway oil fields near, Taft, California, a well-merited celebration was about to begin.  They had just brought in a 30,000-barrel gusher.  As soon as the giant was harnesesed it would pour nearly $100,000 into the pockets of its joint owners every 24 hours, because that was in the days before the production protraction idea.  There was occasion for rejoicing.
     Then quite casually a steel wire dragged across the steel crown-block atop the oil-soaked derrick 90 feet above the earth.  A vagrant spark flickered innocently.  A deafening sound shook the countryside.  The earth trembled for miles around.  Fallen men scrambled as best they could to safety.  In the twinkling of an eye the spouting oil well changed to a spouting inferno.  Where a second before black gold spayed, the Old Faithful, more than 200 feet into the air, now a column of fire leaped and licked a like height and transformed the oil into terrible heat and stifling smoke, the latter to dispute the power of the sun for weeks.
    The great steel derrick was a fallen mass of molten metal in a minute.  Pandemonium reigned.  There were people who thought the end of the world had come.
    Finally engineers set about planning a way to extinguish the fire-spouting furnace.  They poured a powerful shower of steam upon the base of the flames for days, but the fire raged on.  They built a huge steel hood and tried to smother the towering flames by lowering the hood down over the mouth of the shooting well; but the contraption was little more than excelsior.
    Other suggestions were tried with equal futility.  Days dragged into weeks and still the roaring well continued to spout fire into the sullen sky.
    Finally one day a member of the fire-fighting crew proposed that they pile a great charge of dynamite around the mouth of the well, which had gradually grown to be a crater of volcanic proportions, set it off and pile the banks of the crater into the hole.  That, the workman believed, possibly would pinch off the blaze and choke the flow of oil for a sufficient length of time for the fire to burn itself out.  The plan was adopted, not because the owners of the well especially believed anything would come of it, but because they were willing to try anything that offered the remotest possibility of extinguishing the blaze.  Of course there was the chance that the dynamite would explode prematurely while it was being placed around the seething furnace, and thereby blow several workmen into shreds; but that was a small matter. Chance is second nature with the men who "shoot" oil wells and fight the fires that wells sometimes make.
     But the dynamite did not explode prematurely.  It was a perfectly behaved charge and went off exactly at the command of the man at the opposite end of the detonator.  At the second the charge exploded the embankment around the seething crater seemed to leap into the air for a mere fraction of a second.  It folded itself into a great heap and dropped into the hole.
     The mighty force of the spouting oil tore through the puny heap of mud and rock like a hailstone would beat through a paper roof.  But the fire was out!
By RUEL McDANIEL
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Transcription Notes:
Text description beneath [[Image]] Author's name at bottom of page 56