BLAZING OIL WELL

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 4012, 11 August 1931, Page 2

BLAZING OIL WELL

THREE-YEAR-OLD FIRE Joszef Schildzong, secretary to the Firemen’s Association, and his two collaborators have been awarded the prize of £50,000 offered by the Americana Romana Petroleum Oil Company for the extinguishing of the fire in the Moreno petrol w’ell in Rumania. The means by which the fire was extinguished was a powder which Mr Schildzong and his friends invented last year, but which, owing to lack of means, they were unable to test to any satisfactory extent. After depositing a model of the spraying apparatus which disperses the powder in the Hungarian patent office, they sent their plans to the oil company, and were surprised to receive the news last week that the prize was awaiting their arrival.

The Moreno petrol well became ignited three years ago, and since then has consumed a tremendous quantity of petroleum. The column of fire rose to a height of about 700 ft or 800 ft, and the heat in its neighbourhood was so intense that it was impossible to get near enough to smother it. Attempts were made to bomb up the earth near it with aeroplanes, and also to drop bombs filled with extinguishing gases on the top of it. One method attempted by an American engineer was to shoot a bell made of bronze and silicum on to the mouth of the well. But though the bell extinguished the fire for twenty minutes, it was then thrown into the air with a terrific explosion, and the engineer was fatally wounded by the fragments. Plans and inventions of various kinds have been submitted to the oil company, and seven engineers and thirty workmen have been killed during the attempts to extinguish the pillar of fire.