I selected Against the Fires of Hell: The Environmental Disaster of the Gulf War by T. M. Hawley to write a review about a book pertaining to environmental hazards. Hawley does a great job of covering every aspect of this humongous technologically based environmental hazard created by the Persian Gulf War. He begins the book by setting the stage for efforts by firefighters to put out the fires of burning oil wells in Kuwait that were blown up by Iraqi forces in the war. Firefighters were sent to Kuwait by the United States and many other countries of the world to try and exhaust the flames that were continuously burning crude oil and spewing toxic chemicals into the air. Environmental experts were sent into the region completely unprepared. An estimated 732 blown oil wells were burning uncontrollably, and clean up crews were extremely under equipped with the tools and machinery they would need. They also had never had to try and tackle this many burning oil wells, so many different strategies were used in a trial and error fashion. After 8 months, the final well was extinguished, but not before an estimated 11 million barrels of oil gushed from the earth. This amount of oil was valued at an estimated $12 billion, and another $1.5-2 billion was spent on the fire-fighting job. Not only was this operation extremely expensive, but it was accompanied by vast amounts of oil sitting on the Earth’s surface as well as sinking back into the ground.
Hawley then went on to address oil spills along the Gulf coast of Saudi Arabia. A portion of these spills were a result of Iraqi forces using oil spillage as a weapon and intentionally keeping oil pipeline valves open so oil could continually spill out into the environment. One such event that was described in the book entailed Kuwaiti people entering Iraqi controlled oil facilities and switching the “on” and “off” labels on valves so they would be tricked into believing that oil was still spilling out. Other oil spills in the Gulf were a result of oil tankers being targeted for military purposes. Both sides targeted tankers to weaken the opponents’ supply of oil. Iraqi forces even tried putting anti-aircraft guns and other weaponry on oil tankers with the hopes that opposing forces would not sink the tanker for fear of another oil tanker. These oil spills had many adverse effects on the region. An estimated 30,000 birds were killed as a result of being covered in oil, and other ecosystems were disrupted. Commercial and subsistence fishing were put on hold due to the vast quantities of oil in the sea. Clean up crews also had to hurry to prevent the oil from reaching desalination plants. The contamination of these waters would have been devastating to Saudi Arabia because they are so dependent on these facilities to provide fresh water for the country.
Hawley then shifted his focus to other consequences the war had on the environment. He described many instances where sand in the deserts was disturbed by vehicles, explosions, or man-made structures. Even the slightest bit of disturbance in the sand can cause large amounts of sand and dust to be blown around in the winds of deserts. These sand storms were capable of creating a sand dune large enough to block an entire road overnight. Another cause of concern was the abundance of land mines and other bombs that did not explode that are located virtually everywhere in Kuwait. Many efforts to dispose of mines were taken, but this only accounted for a fraction of the total number of mines that were deployed. Many small explosive devices, known as rock eyes or lawn darts, and littered throughout the country as well. Many of these explosives were designed for use with areas that had harder ground, like Russia. Because the sand was a softer landing zone, many of these did not explode. Many land mines and lawn darts have been buried by sandstorms, so detection is virtually impossible. To give an idea of how ubiquitous these explosive devices were, Hawley described a segment of a newspaper entitled “Explosive of the Week”. This segment described and showed pictures explosives that people should be aware of, and also stressed that people should never reach down and pick up an object that they were not familiar with.
Finally, the air pollution that arose from the fires of burning oil wells and other health effects were discussed. Because the oil wells burned for over 8 months, the air in Kuwait was extensively polluted. Reports described black air that covered the areas for months. The air was so concentrated with the fumes from the oil, that a person could go outside and have droplets of oil fall from the sky on them. Some poor people made money off of using gasoline to clean the falling oil off of cars. Because the air was full of pollutants, many different organizations and governments conducted air quality tests. Despite the air being so black, most tests showed levels of toxic gases and particles that were not at dangerous levels. Many people did not believe the results of these tests because they could look outside and see black air. They looked at these results and thought it was the government trying to downplay the situation at hand. The long-term effects of this air pollution were not discussed in this book because it was written in 1992, but it did include that some people had problems with asthma.
Although I was very impressed with the details and overall knowledge that this book possesses, it did have some shortcomings in my opinion. It did not really give very much historical background on the events that took place in the Gulf War, namely the blowing up of the oil wells by Iraqi forces. I assume that this is because it was written immediately following the events, but it would help out readers in the future to better understand the content. Some of methods used to distinguish the fires of the oil wells were also a bit confusing to follow. It was written with the assumption that the reader had knowledge about the structure and way that oil wells worked, which I did not.
Overall, I did enjoy reading this book. I gained an unbelievable amount of knowledge about this topic that previously I was greatly unaware of. There were also many details and aspects to this environmental disaster that I never even considered, which I thought was very cool to learn about. I would recommend this book to others, but only if they were interested in the Gulf War or environmental hazards. It is not a book with a real storyline that the average person would find enjoyable to read, but it does give the reader an incredible insight on the effects of the Persian Gulf War. If someone was to read this book that was not familiar with the events of the Gulf War, I would suggest that they do a little amount of background reading to better understand the content of this book.
