Oil-fire legend 'Red' Adair dies

"Red" Adair, the renowned oil-well firefighter, died yesterday of natural causes in a Houston hospital. He was 89.

Adair is credited with battling more than 2000 land and offshore oil-well fires, including the Piper Alpha platform in the North Sea in 1988 and the hundreds of wells left burning after the Iraqis fled Kuwait at the end of the Gulf War in 1991.

Adair's life was the subject of the 1968 movie The Hellfighters, starring John Wayne.