Gallery
Image of the fire that burnt for 45 days
Extinguishing the fire using "Mr Schooley's hood"
View of Roma taken from Hospital Hill, 1899
The Hospital Hill Fire was a fire at an oil drilling rig that took place on 27 October 1908 at Hospital Hill, about half a mile from the town of Roma, Queensland, Australia. It took 45 days to put out the fire.
On 27 October 1908 oil exploration drilling continued at the Mineral Oil Company's No.2 bore. [1] Just after 9am, whilst drilling at a depth of 1,128 metres below ground, water started coming up from the borehead. The presence of bubbles in the water showed that gas was present. Within a few minutes, "there was a shattering roar and a terrible volume of gas burst from the hole; a dark vapour billowed around the spouting gas". [1]
There was immediate concern that the gas would ignite from the fire under the boiler which was about 20 yards away. Mr Taylor, the manager of the rig, refused to endanger the lives of his men by attempting to extinguish the fire and ordered his workers to retreat. Then at 9:15am the gas inevitably ignited into a huge column of flame. The explosion was described as being like "the discharge of a cannon" and could be heard in town (half-a-mile away).
Newspaper articles reported the fire to have been between 40–50 feet (12–15 metres) high. It generated so much heat it was impossible to stand within 200 feet (61 metres) of the flame. Grass in a paddock over 90 metres away was scorched. The expensive drilling equipment over the borehead was destroyed by the intense heat. The derrick "crumbled up like a piece of tissue paper" in the flames.
At night, the flames at the bore lit up the surrounding area, with the glow seen up to 60 kilometres away. In 2008 Roma Regional Council's Deputy Mayor, Councillor Tom Hartley reminisced that he remembered his grandfather saying you could read a newspaper at night from up to 6–7 miles away because of the gas fire on Hospital Hill. [2]
Although the fire at the borehead was not a direct threat to the town of Roma, there was a fear that a nearby gasometer, which stored the town's supply of gas, would ignite. When gasometers are full, excess gas must be allowed to escape as a safety measure. The Roma gasometer was full and the excess gas was venting only 250 feet from the fire. If the venting gas came into contact with the flames it would have ignited and caused the entire gasometer to explode. Decisive action was needed to avoid an explosion which would have caused inestimable damage the town. Roma's Mayor, Alderman Care, ordered that the excess gas from the gasometer be pumped into the town mains, and allowed to escape in Arthur Street.
The gas fire continued to burn for 45 days. The Brisbane Courier reported that the resumption of boring had begun on or about 15 December. [3] News of this sensation spread throughout Australia and caused a tourism boom in Roma, as people came far and wide to marvel at the fire, to see this "Wonderful Outburst of Nature". [4] One report states that visitors came from as far away as New Zealand. Roma Town Council asked the Railway Department to run special excursion trains. An article published in The Western Star suggests there was a bit of controversy, when over 250 people from Charleville (269 Kilometres W of Roma) wanted to purchase excursion tickets to Roma. Many thought the tickets would cost between 12 shillings and six pence to 15 shillings, but were "disappointed" to find out they were £1.
There were several aborted attempts to extinguish the flames. Eventual success was thanks to Mr Schooley, Manager of the Intercolonial Boring Company. Mr Schooley designed a special iron hood, approximately 8 feet (2.4 metres) tall and 6 feet square (1.8 metres), with a tall chimney at the top and a pipe at the side both fitted with valves, and a flange around the bottom. The hood was built in Brisbane then transported to Roma. The hood was lifted over the bore head on cables then lowered into position. The flange was covered with dirt and rocks to prevent gas escaping and oxygen entering at the bottom of the hood. The valves in the chimney and pipe were then slowly closed, starving the fire of oxygen until it was extinguished. The whole operation took several hours and was conducted during a series of thunderstorms.
A lighter is a portable device which creates a controlled flame, and can be used to ignite a variety of flammable items, such as cigarettes, butane gas, fireworks, candles, or campfires. A lighter typically consists of a metal or plastic container filled with a flammable liquid, a compressed flammable gas and in rarer cases a flammable solid i.e. rope in a trench lighter, a means of ignition to produce the flame, and some provision for extinguishing the flame or merely controlling it to such a degree that the user may extinguish it with their breath. Alternatively, a lighter can be one which uses electricity to create an electric arc utilizing the created plasma as the source of ignition or a heating element can be used in a similar vein to heat the target to its ignition temperatures, as first formally utilized by Friedrich Wilhelm Schindler to light cigars and now more commonly seen incorporated into the automobile auxiliary power outlet to ignite the target material. Different lighter fuels have different characteristics which is the main influence behind the creation and purchasing of a variety of lighter types.
A gas holder or gasholder, also known as a gasometer, is a large container in which natural gas or town gas is stored near atmospheric pressure at ambient temperatures. The volume of the container follows the quantity of stored gas, with pressure coming from the weight of a movable cap. Typical volumes for large gas holders are about 50,000 cubic metres (1,800,000 cu ft), with 60-metre-diameter (200 ft) structures.
A safety lamp is any of several types of lamp that provides illumination in places such as coal mines where the air may carry coal dust or a build-up of inflammable gases, which may explode if ignited, possibly by an electric spark. Until the development of effective electric lamps in the early 1900s, miners used flame lamps to provide illumination. Open flame lamps could ignite flammable gases which collected in mines, causing explosions; safety lamps were developed to enclose the flame to prevent it from igniting the explosive gases. Flame safety lamps have been replaced for lighting in mining with sealed explosion-proof electric lights, but continue to be used to detect gases.
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The Devil's Cigarette Lighter was a natural gas well fire at Gassi Touil in the Sahara Desert of Algeria. The fire was ignited on November 6, 1961, and burned until being extinguished by Red Adair and his colleagues, who used explosives to deprive the flame of oxygen, on April 28, 1962.
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Roy Robert Richter, O.B.E. was a pioneer in the Australian oil industry and former World War II RAF Bomber Command pilot with No. 189 Squadron RAF based at RAF Fulbeck in Lincolnshire.
This Wikipedia article incorporates text from Roma's Towering Inferno (25 October 2012) by Myles Sinnamon published by the State Library of Queensland under CC BY licence , accessed on 3 August 2017.