WASHINGTON, Aug 8 (AFP) - Legendary Texan fire-fighter Red Adair, who spent a lifetime battling oil well blazes around the world, including those set by retreating Iraqi troops during the 1991 Gulf War, has died at the age of 89.
Adair, whose Red Adair Co. helped extinguish some 2,000 oil well fires on land and at sea, died in a Houston, Texas, hospital on Saturday, his daughter, Robyn, told AFP.
A pioneer in the dangerous field of capping oil well blowouts and fires, Adair's exploits were the stuff of legend and took him from the Middle East to Australia to Mexico and the North Sea oil platforms with other stops in between.
John Wayne even made a movie about his life called "Hellfighters." Adair served as a technical advisor on the 1968 film.
Born Paul Adair in Houston on June 18, 1915, one of eight children, Adair quit high school and went to work for the Southern Pacific Railroad in 1936, according to his official biography.
He went into the oil business in 1938, working in the oil fields as a casual laborer, and was inducted into the US army in 1945, where he served in a bomb disposal squadron.
After the war, Adair went to work for Myron Kinley, another pioneer of oil well fire-fighting, before forming his own company in 1959.
Red Adair Co. developed new techniques and equipment for fighting oil well fires and blowouts on land and at sea, where submersible fire-fighting vessels were first used.
Among Adair's most notable feats was the capping in April 1962 of an oil well fire in the Sahara Desert known as the "Devil's Cigarette Lighter" which had burned for 167 days and was so massive it could be seen by orbiting astronaut John Glenn in his space capsule.
Adair described extinguishing the "Devel's Cigarette Lighter" as one of his toughest jobs ever.
His teams also battled a huge 1970 blaze on an oil platform offshore of the southern US state of Louisiana, the April 1977 Bravo offshore blowout in the North Sea, the June 1979 IXTOC 1 blowout in the Gulf of Mexico and the Piper Alpha disaster in the North Sea in July 1988 which left 167 people dead.
Following the 1991 Gulf War, Adair, then 75, was called in to help extinguish fires at Kuwaiti oil wells set by retreating Iraqi troops.
His company managed to put out 117 oilwell fires as a job which had been expected to take three to five years was completed in just nine months.
Adair, whose nickname came from a fondness for the color red and who would sport red overalls on the job, sold Red Adair Co. in 1993 but continued to serve in the industry as a consultant.