''Dos Bocas'' oil fire

The Dos Bocas oil fire was a 1908 blowout and oil fire that took place in Veracruz, Mexico. The fire started after a blowout occurred, causing crude oil to make contact with the flames that powered the oil derrick. The fire continued from 4 July 1908 to 30 August 1908, when the oil deposit was burnt out. For the nearly two months that the fire burned, nearly 90,000 barrels (14,000 m3) of oil flowed into the surrounding landscape each day. Ultimately, the Dos Bocas blowout (named for the two gaping black holes it left it the ground - "two mouths") ended up being one of the largest oil spills in the history of the oil industry.[1] The two large craters formed in the ground around the oil well were caused by the pressure of the oilfield. It was impossible to stop the flow of oil because the well casing had been blown off during the gush.[2]The heat exacerbated the difficulties workers faced when trying to stop the flow of oil. Temperatures were high which caused those working to put out the fire and contain the spill to be unable to go closer than a few hundred feet.[3] The oil coming out was a 200-foot tall (61 m) column and the fire burned at over 1,000 °F (538 °C). [4] Twenty-seven kilometres (17 mi) away from the fire, town residents said that they were able to read a newspaper at night by the light of the flames.[2] The cost of extinguishing the fire and capping the well was $3,000,000.[5]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Miller, Shawn William (2007-09-10). An Environmental History of Latin America. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521848534.
  2. 1 2 Gray, Peter; Oliver, Kendrick (2004-09-04). The Memory of Catastrophe. Manchester University Press. ISBN 9780719063459.
  3. ↑ "Oil and Revolution in Mexico". publishing.cdlib.org. Retrieved 2015-09-15.
  4. ↑ Union, Pan American (1914-01-01). Bulletin.
  5. ↑ Showalter, William Joseph (May 1914). ""Mexico and Mexicans"". The National Geographic Magazine. 25 (5): 490.

Further reading

  • Santiago, Myrna (2001). "Rejecting Progress in Paradise: Huastecs, the environment, and the oil industry in Veracruz, Mexico 1900-1935". In Place, Susan E. Tropical rainforests: Latin American nature and society in transition. Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 85–87. ISBN 978-0-8420-2908-7.
  • Santiago, Myrna (2006). The Ecology of Oil: Environment, Labor, and the Mexican Revolution, 1900-1938. Cambridge University Press. pp. 135–144. ISBN 978-0-521-11537-7.


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