Born Paul Neal Adair in Houston on June 18, 1915, he was one of eight children of Charlie and Mary Adair. The father, who had moved to Texas with his wife from Missouri at the turn of the 20th century, was a pretty good blacksmith but a poor businessman. Young Red worked for him as a little boy, awaking early to get the furnace fire started in the shop. Trying to figure out how to make it bigger and better, he blew up the furnace, he once recalled, and got a beating.

A fine athlete, he excelled in swimming, basketball and football. As a teenager, he earned extra money as a semipro boxer, and never lost. He also got good grades, but quit high school to contribute to the family finances and worked at many jobs.

Mr. Adair first learned about oil- and gas-well fires when he worked for a Texas company, Oil Pressure Control. He left for the Army in World War II and was assigned to a bomb demolition unit, for which he worked without injury for two years.

When the war was over, he returned to Texas and got a job with Myron M. Kinley, then regarded as one of the best firefighters in the oil business. He was working on a well in South Texas one day when it blew up and sent him sailing through the air. But he landed unscathed, and legends about Red Adair started to grow.

He was with Mr. Kinley until 1959. When Mr. Kinley retired, Mr. Adair bought all his equipment and founded the Red Adair Company.

Over the years, Mr. Adair was battered by explosions several times, catapulted into a pool of hot oil and temporarily blinded by hydrogen sulfide. On one occasion, his pelvis was crushed by a crane on a rig off the California coast. But he claimed that none of those injuries were serious.

In 1961, he fought a huge fire fed by gas rushing out of a pipe in the Algerian desert. The spectacular flame, soaring 450 feet high, was conquered by Mr. Adair with his usual cocktail of water and dynamite. He was not injured.