Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 88.djvu/31



Vol.88 $1.50 No.1Annually

URING a violent thunder storm a bolt of lightning struck the oilsoaked ground near the Potrero del Llano No. 4 oil well near Tampico, Mexico, the greatest oil well in the world. For more than four months from that date, August fourteenth, 1914, the resulting conflagration resisted all efforts to subdue it. The flames, covering an area of more than a city block, swept over the mouth of the great well, but thanks to the concrete cap covering the orifice, the main body of oil did not ignite.

Upon the first outbreak of the flames, it was thought that the main well was doomed, as well as a great lake of oil containing nearly two million barrels, which was situated nearby. Twenty-five hundred men were summoned to the work of fighting the flames, and apparatus which had been successfully used at other fires of the same nature was brought to the spot. This great force of workmen labored ceaselessly day and night until the fire was conquered, four months later.

The first precaution against the spread of the flames was the erection of a retaining wall of sand and dirt