Gates of Hell, Turkmenistan’s 50-Year Old Fiery Pit to Be Extinguished

One of the tourist fancies found in the hot expanse of the Karakum desert in Turkmenistan is a hole 230 feet wide known as The Gates of Heel that has been on fire for over 50 years.

Also, the fiery pit is technically known as the Darvaza gas crater, many have come to call it the “The Gates of Hell.”

With a fiery glow that can be seen for miles around, the Gates of Hell crater might soon be no more as the government plans on closing it.

The country’s president, Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov announced plans to extinguish the 5-decade-old conflagration in the chasm citing safety concerns for those living nearby as well as economic loss as valuable methane gas burns off into the atmosphere.

“We are losing valuable natural resources for which we could get significant profits and use them for improving the well-being of our people,” Berdymukhamedov said.

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This news made international headlines, especially since people have been trying to put out the crater’s fires since they first ignited.

The Darvaza gas crater, which is near the 350-person village of Darvaza, is believed to have been created in 1971 when a Soviet drilling rig accidentally punched into a massive underground natural gas cavern, causing the ground to collapse and the entire drilling rig to fall in.

Having punctured a pocket of gas, poisonous fumes began leaking at an alarming rate.

To head off a potential environmental catastrophe, the Soviets set the hole alight, figuring it would stop burning within a few weeks.

Decades later, the fiery pit is still going strong. It has since, become a popular tourist attraction in the Central Asian country, and has added a lot of bliss to those touring the region.

The decision to put the fiery pit to an end is not unfounded. It could be a result of economic reasons. Turkmenistan, incidentally, sits atop the fourth-largest known reserve of natural gas in the world, and the country’s economy is largely dependent on gas exports.

Worth noting is that President Berdymukhamedov previously ordered professionals to kill the Gates of Hell in 2010, though those efforts were unsuccessful. Well, maybe with luck, they will get it right this time.

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Article by Shumi