I am a great admirer of big, blowing wells; the bigger they are the more I like 'em. They remind me of a time when Mother Earth had bottom hole pressure and drilling, completing and producing oil and gas wells kept a hand on his toes at all times. Inducing energy into a wellbore by sitting in front of a computer in a frac van all day long must be really boring.
This is a production well in Oklahoma City, above, circ. 1938; those are flow lines tied into a separator. It appears the production tree has simply disappeared. When blowout flows like this bell out three or four times larger than the OD of the casing, its blowing hard, man. This well is a gettin' it.
I know a handful of men who would walk right up to this thing and start problem solving. 99.99%, however, would feel uncomfortable getting within a hundred yards of this well. They're good with just...watching. This well is loud and will make your jaws start to ache within a few minutes. The wood floor is vibrating, the flow going up through the standard derrick will created a high pitched sort of hum and the ground around the well quivers. If you stay around it too long it'll start to make you feel crazy, so you have to get away from it for a few minutes...then start all over. It can be hard to breathe under this sort of flow because air is getting sucked up in it.
Step 1 will be to start tearing away timbers to get a look at the casing stub. Step 2 will entirely depend on how Step 1 went. In the well control business you constantly find yourself winging it.
This is awesome photograph is courtesy The Oklahoma Historical Society.