The Fires of Kuwait Documentary الفيلم الوثائقي: حرائق الكويت

There is a new documentary called Fearless Encounters, and it’s about the Fires of Kuwait that happened right after the liberation of Kuwait in 1991, when the Iraqi Army burned Kuwaiti oil fields during their retreat and surrender of Kuwait.

The documentary is almost an hour-long, and is made mostly of never before seen footage. I personally remember the fires (and their subsequent pollution) first hand, as me and my family had stayed in Kuwait during the whole invasion period. The whole of Kuwait was covered by dark smoke all day and night. Noon and early afternoon looked more like twilight and dawn, than bright day light days.

The fires and their heavy smokes were very much a huge part of our lives during the months after the liberation, but they still were the heaviest and darkest the closer you got to the oil fields.

I remember driving up to the Chale area just a few weeks after the invasion, and we could literally see the smoke and darkness get thicker by the minute as we get closer to the chales. We were there around early afternoon and spent only a couple of hours tops there, but ever since we crossed Fahaheel\Ahmadi, the place was too dark to navigate without lights or masks. And in addition to the dark and the smoke, the whole beach was dug into trenches and underground bunkers. The whole scene was heartbreaking, Kuwait was destroyed in a very savage way.

Almost everyone said that the oil fires would take years to put out, so everyone in Kuwait felt very proud and patriotic when the fires were put out in just 8-9 months. This documentary shows the hard work the firefighters and engineers put in to accomplish this patriotic work.

It opens in Kuwait on thursday the 10th of May, across all KNCC\Cinescape cinemas:

Fearless Encounters is a new documentary film honoring the Kuwaiti Oil Firefighting Team. The film was never edited or released until 2011. Shot 20 years ago by the Kuwaiti filmmaker, Talal Showaish-Salem, who spent 6 weeks with the team in the horrific inferno. Telling the inside untold story of the Kuwaiti oil firefighters’ heroic Fearless Encounters .

When the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was forced out of Kuwait by the world coalition forces in February 1991, out of spite and hatred he ordered his defeated retreating army to blow up all Kuwaitis” oil wells. More than 650 oil wells were on fire for 8 months, burning on average 6 million barrels of oil P/Day. In total, more than 1 billion barrels of crude oil was burnt.

The Kuwaiti firefighting team started 180 days after the main 4 world famous, American and Canadian oil firefighting teams. The Kuwaiti team overwhelmed the world by their unmatched speed in killing the fiercest oil well fires, reaching temperatures of 2000C. Against all bets, the Kuwaitis managed to extinguish the biggest well in Kuwait BG160, which was burning 60,000 barrels of oil per day. With their speed and relentless enthusiasm, they ignited the competitive spirit amongst all the other firefighting teams, which lead to extinguishing all the fires in 7 months only, compared to the initial world expert predictions of 5 years.