Before Boots & Coots: The Devil’s Cigarette Lighter
GEONAVIGATE INDUSTRY CHATTER
Runtime: 5:37 (337.458 seconds)
Original narration and archival audio.

TRANSCRIPT

0:00 — A helicopter on standby

[0:00]
Algeria, nineteen sixty-two. A gas well has been burning for months. At the edge of the site, a helicopter waits on standby. Beside it is a coffin. The crew's leader later recalled that precaution.
Sources: BRISCOE_GT2, PERISCOPE_GT2

[0:14] ORIGINAL RECORDING — Red Adair · retrospective film narration
Now this is something we never had to use and proud we didn't.
Sources: PERISCOPE_GT2

[0:23]
That was Red Adair. At Gassi Touil, a well called G-T-two is feeding a flame above the wreckage of its drilling rig. His crew must put out the fire, then regain control of the well.
Sources: BRISCOE_GT2, PERISCOPE_GT2

0:35 — The men behind the names

[0:36]
Boots Hansen had served in the Navy's submarine force. Back in Houston, he painted signs with his father and drove stock cars for Red Adair. Then he went to work fighting well fires.
Sources: BOOTSHANSEN_OBITUARY_2019

[0:48]
Here is Hansen in a later interview, recorded in nineteen seventy-nine.
Sources: TAMI_BOOTS_1979

[0:53] ORIGINAL RECORDING — Boots Hansen · 1979 interview
And I've been doing this kind of work twenty-seven years.
Sources: TAMI_BOOTS_1979

[0:57]
Coots was Ed Matthews, a trained machinist who had worked for Reed Bit Company. He spent ten years with Halliburton, working as a roughneck, cementer and special-tools operator.
Sources: COOTSMATTHEWS_OBITUARY_2010, SEC_HISTORY

[1:09]
Both had worked in Myron Kinley's firefighting business. In nineteen sixty-two, they are members of Adair's crew. The Boots and Coots company is still years away.
Sources: SEC_HISTORY

1:20 — Water in the desert

[1:21]
Back at Gassi Touil, another rig drills for water. Crews dig storage pits and run supply lines across the site. That water has to keep flowing while men and machines work beside the fire.
Sources: PERISCOPE_GT2

[1:34]
Caterpillar D-eight tractors carry protective housings. Water monitors stand behind sheet-metal shields, with their nozzles aimed toward the fire. As the water starts flowing, men move into the spray to reach the wreckage.
Sources: BRISCOE_GT2, PERISCOPE_GT2

[1:49]
Hot metal can reignite escaping gas. The crew has to clear the wreckage and protect the wellhead while it works.
Sources: PERISCOPE_GT2

[1:57]
A long boom reaches into the wreckage with a water-cooled hook. Sections of the drilling rig are dragged out of the heat. The drilling derrick, the mud tank, the pump: equipment that once helped drill the well now has to be pulled away from it.
Sources: PERISCOPE_GT2, BRISCOE_GT2

[2:13]
The noise makes ordinary conversation useless close to the fire. A raised hand becomes an instruction. Someone signals for a valve to open; another man acts on it. In Adair's account, those hand signals are how the crew gets the job done over the roar.
Sources: PERISCOPE_GT2

[2:30]
Among the men is Charlie Tolar, a professional football player with the Houston Oilers. French workers and engineers are part of the operation too. At the entrance, a board tracks personnel moving through the work area and toward the well.
Sources: BRISCOE_GT2, PERISCOPE_GT2

2:46 — The attempt

[2:46]
In April, the extinguishing attempt is postponed, then postponed again. The preparations continue while G-T-two keeps burning. At last, the crew moves in with the explosive charge.
Sources: LM_19620425, LM_19620427, PERISCOPE_GT2

[3:00]
The machine carries the charge toward the well. The crew places it and withdraws.
Sources: PERISCOPE_GT2, LM_19620430

[3:09]
The flame is gone. The gas keeps coming. The crew now has to replace the damaged equipment while the well is still blowing.
Sources: PERISCOPE_GT2

3:17 — Find sound pipe

[3:17]
A dragline digs around the wellhead until the crew can reach sound pipe below the damaged equipment. Water stays on the work as the excavation exposes hot ground. The old head is damaged and crooked. It has to come off while gas continues to escape.
Sources: PERISCOPE_GT2

[3:35]
Men work beside the stream of gas with goggles on. They strip away sections of pipe and use cutting equipment to get the damaged head off. The machinery, the casing, and the men are all crowded into the same small working area.
Sources: PERISCOPE_GT2

[3:50]
The operator's drilling engineer, Le Blanc, stays with the job. Adair singles him out in his account. Together, the crews are exposing the connection that will take the replacement equipment.
Sources: PERISCOPE_GT2

4:02 — Against the flow

[4:02]
The replacement head must seal around the pipe and grip it tightly enough to stay put under pressure. The crew assembles and checks it before taking it to the well.
Sources: PERISCOPE_GT2

[4:13]
A boom supports the head as lines pull it down over the pipe. The crew works the assembly into place against the escaping gas. Then comes the blowout preventer: the equipment that gives them a means of shutting the flow path.
Sources: PERISCOPE_GT2, SLB_BOP

[4:27]
The crew fastens the connections beside the flowing well. Safety engineers check for gas. The head and preventer are in place; the next step is to close the upward path and divert the flow.
Sources: PERISCOPE_GT2

4:40 — Control

[4:40]
The crew closes the preventer, directing the gas into controlled flow lines. Red Adair narrates the moment himself.
Sources: PERISCOPE_GT2

[4:48] ORIGINAL RECORDING — Red Adair · retrospective film narration
And this is what you waited six months to do.
Sources: PERISCOPE_GT2

[4:52]
Mud is then part of securing the well. Its weight can provide pressure inside the hole to oppose the reservoir. The surface equipment controls the opening; the fluid helps control what is feeding it.
Sources: SLB_KILL_FLUID, BRISCOE_GT2

5:05 — The names on the door

[5:06]
By nineteen sixty-eight, Adair, Boots and Coots were technical advisers on John Wayne's Hellfighters. In nineteen seventy-eight, Boots and Coots opened their own company. Matthews's obituary recounts a coin toss: Coots became president, and Boots's name went first.
Sources: AFI_HELLFIGHTERS_CREDITS, SEC_HISTORY, COOTSMATTHEWS_OBITUARY_2010

SOURCE NOTES

The event is the 1961–62 Gassi Touil GT2 operation in Algeria. The company Boots & Coots was formed in 1978; Hansen and Matthews were members of Adair’s crew during the earlier operation.

Adair’s two excerpts come from retrospective narration in The Devil’s Cigarette Lighter. Hansen’s separate excerpt comes from the 1979 documentary Profession: Pompier du Pétrole. No new interview with either man is claimed.

Historical source markings remain visible. Later interview footage and undated portraits are labelled separately from the Gassi Touil operation. The explanatory diagrams are conceptual and do not establish exact well geometry.

Extinguishing the flame and controlling the gas are separate stages. The film shows the subsequent wellhead work, flow diversion and later mud-pumping activity; the episode makes no claim that extinguishing alone stopped the well.

The score is editorial music. No blast, engine or water effects are presented as authenticated location sound.

SOURCES

[BRISCOE_GT2] Devil’s Cigarette Lighter [Composite]
https://digitalcollections.briscoecenter.org/item/3353
Institutional catalogue identifies GT2, Gassi Touil, the crew and the 1961–62 operation. The catalogued production is dated circa 1965, separately from the event. Its running times differ from the Periscope preservation copy.

[PERISCOPE_GT2] The Devil’s Cigarette Lighter — Periscope 51414
https://archive.org/details/51414TheDevilsCigaretteLighter
Red Adair Co. / Cameron Iron Works film, preserved by Periscope Film LLC. Historical Gassi Touil operations and Adair’s retrospective narration; preservation markings remain visible. The soundtrack is not presented as an independently authenticated live recording of the fire.

[BOOTSHANSEN_OBITUARY_2019] Asger “Boots” Hansen Jr. obituary
https://www.dignitymemorial.com/obituaries/fort-myers-fl/asger-hansen-8745849
Published obituary supports Hansen’s Navy service, sign painting and stock-car background. The later portrait is undated and is not presented as a 1962 photograph.

[TAMI_BOOTS_1979] Profession: Pompier du Pétrole
https://texasarchive.org/overview/2019_01223
Hubert le Campion’s 1979 documentary, preserved by the Texas Archive of the Moving Image. Hansen’s experience remark is identified as a later interview; unrelated Louisiana firefighting is not used as Gassi Touil footage.

[COOTSMATTHEWS_OBITUARY_2010] Edward Owen Matthews obituary
https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/houstonchronicle/name/edward-matthews-obituary?id=10283657
Published obituary supports Matthews’s machining and field-service background. The final coin-toss account is explicitly attributed to this obituary.

[SEC_HISTORY] Halliburton: Linked at the roots to Boots & Coots
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/833845/000095012310035260/h72250e425.htm
Corporate retrospective filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Supports the founders’ earlier work and the 1978 company formation. Promotional rankings and later-well totals are not adopted.

[LM_19620425] La tentative d’extinction… est reportée à mercredi
https://www.lemonde.fr/archives-du-monde/25-04-1962/
Contemporary archive headline records a postponed attempt. The episode does not infer the reason for the delay.

[LM_19620427] La tentative d’extinction… de nouveau remise
https://www.lemonde.fr/archives-du-monde/27-04-1962/2/
Contemporary archive headline records a further postponement. A postponement is not represented as a failed explosion.

[LM_19620430] La flamme du puits de Gassi-Touil a été mouchée…
https://www.lemonde.fr/archives/article/1962/04/30/la-flamme-du-puits-de-gassi-touil-a-ete-mouchee-samedi-matin-par-l-explosion-de-250-kg-de-dynamite_2368414_1819218.html
Contemporary report of the extinguishing operation and continuing gas flow. The episode omits charge quantity, explosive composition and a precise ignition date.

[SLB_BOP] Blowout preventer
https://glossary.slb.com/en/terms/b/blowout_preventer.aspx
General technical explanation of a blowout preventer. Modern equipment details are not used to identify the 1962 apparatus.

[SLB_KILL_FLUID] Kill-weight fluid
https://glossary.slb.com/terms/k/kill-weight_fluid
General explanation of fluid-column pressure opposing formation influx. No GT2 mud weight, pumping rate, well depth or operating procedure is inferred.

[AFI_HELLFIGHTERS_CREDITS] Hellfighters (1968) production credits
https://catalog.afi.com/Film/19430-HELLFIGHTERS
Production-credit record identifies Adair, Hansen and Matthews as technical advisers to Hellfighters (1968). The episode does not claim that GT2 alone inspired the film.

[HUMBLE_MUSEUM_COOTS] Edward Coots Matthews — Humble Museum oil-well firefighting exhibit
https://humblemuseum.stqry.app/en/story/76591
Humble Museum’s named exhibit provides the identity context for the Matthews portrait. Its photograph date is unestablished; it is not represented as a 1962 portrait.