BITE DOWN AND OFF YOU GO TO WORK

Once taken to the worksite offices, the full magnitude of what we were dealing with became a shocking reality. We were in a trailer type office complex, in the middle of 600 wild wells (fires) and about 250 wells that were damaged to various degrees, but not yet on fire. It was dark, loud, smoky and some of the wells made a horrendous shreaking noise as oil or gas under high pressure was released thru damaged or destroyed well heads. It sounded like a hundred jet engines all fired up and coming from different directions.

Some of the wells had the wellhead blown off and oil was shooting into the air and on fire like a giant torch. Others had a part of the wellhead blown away. This resulted in, the escaping oil or gas was shooting out horizontally. Then, on fire much like a giant blowtorch laying on its side. Still others had created a lake of oil around the wellhead before this lake caught fire. Or the lake was not yet on fire, but the wellhead was burning like a torch in the middle of a 100 meter diameter lake.

Some were not yet on fire and just gushing black crude oil into the sky to fall on and cover anything within its reach. There were wells that spewed a great white cloud of H2S gas, these may have been by far the most dangerous type. Some wellheads were damaged such that fire spewed in two opposite directions maybe both horizontal and at an angle away from the well.

Everything inside of this oilfield was covered by a thick, sticky, smelling covering of black crude oil. It was to me, a vision of pure “hell”.Much of my first sights are hard to describe in words. From inside of the oilfield, it was difficult to take pictures, it was dark, smoky and a way too dangerous to get close to the fires. In addition we were not allowed to take pictures in work areas. Our trucks were routinely searched for cameras at checkpoints. Any photographic equipment found was confiscated.

So the images that I have are from a distance, mostly on the perimeter of the oilfields or at a time when many of the fires to the north of us were being extinguished and the prevailing wind was moving the smoke away from us. However I am going to display those images that I captured myself to give you somewhat of an idea of what this area was like. Then multiply it by 600 times, cover yourself and your vehicle in oil, turn up the temp to about 40 degrees C and picture the sounds of hell and you will them have a partial idea of what I encountered. All I could think of was “get me the hell outta here”.