Sometime around 1993 I was bored and picked up a Reader’s Digest my parents had lying around. In it was an article about how the oil fires Saddam set in Iraq were put out in about a quarter of the time the crews estimated.

Volunteer oil well firefighters from a host of first world and some developing countries showed up and started trying to work together.

The intense heat makes for slow going, and can melt not just people but also equipment. It turned out every country had solved a different part of the problem. The Russians used thermal mass - they attached the hose to the barrel of a tank and let the armor soak up heat for a while. Someone else had better heat shielding. The Americans (?) had perfected detonation to extinguish rather than ignite a fire. And someone had better protective gear.

All of these techniques could be combined. Heat shielding on a tank means the machines you can get the equipment closer to the fire for longer, and the suits and explosives put the fire out faster so the capping crew can get in there.

In the end they were doing several wells per day and multiple sites per week, instead of a few wells per week. Parallel invention doesn’t always end up at the exact same outcome.