The World - News from July 21, 1988

A team led by Texas trouble-shooter Paul (Red) Adair extinguished the largest fire still burning on the Piper Alpha platform in the North Sea, which was ripped apart by an explosion on July 6. Adair’s team pumped hundreds of gallons of seawater into the well to cool it before capping it with cement, according to Los Angeles-based Occidental Petroleum Corp., one of the rig owners. Four other wells, however, continue to burn two weeks after the blast and subsequent blazes that wrecked the platform, killing 167 workers.