On Nov. 6, 1961, in the eastern Algerian desert, there was a spark and a flash and then a tremendous, rumbling growl when a pipe on a natural-gas well ruptured. More than 6,000 cubic feet of flaming gas per second exploded through a hole in the ground, and a deafening jet of fire roared 800 feet into the sky, melting the Saharan sand into glass. The fire burned so intensely that, like a hurricane, it was given a name -- the Devil's Cigarette Lighter -- and it was seemingly endless: four months later, John Glenn looked down from orbit and saw a slash of orange flickering above one of the largest deposits of natural gas on the planet.

Nearly six months after the well blew, a 46-year-old plug of a Texan named Red Adair maneuvered a modified bulldozer next to the mouth of the inferno. A 60-foot boom was attached to the dozer, and nearly 800 pounds of explosives were attached to the boom, to be ignited from afar. Red's crew -- men who, like him, dressed in red overalls and red hard hats -- sprayed him with water from a reservoir they'd filled from a well they'd dug so he wouldn't vaporize in the heat.

It's a gift, the ability to ignore the perfectly sensible instinct to flee and instead stand next to a screaming hole in the earth. The temperature of well fires is measured in thousands of degrees, and the noise is so ferocious that it ceases to register as sound -- it's simply a deep, crunching vibration. It never seemed to bother Red, though, not since that day in 1938 when a valve let loose on an Oklahoma rig and crude started belching and everyone ran like hell while Red just stood there, wrenching the valve back into place.

The greater gift than bravery, though, is knowing how to tame that hole. Well fires are all different, but the basic dynamic is the same: a stream of crude or gas blasting up through the ground and a tangle of pipes and valves. The flames need to be beaten back and corralled while the wreckage of pipes is removed, then the fire has to be extinguished, and finally, the well has to be plugged. It's all miserable, filthy work, but it requires a thorough technical understanding of high-pressure physics and, frankly, exceptionally good instincts.