If you thought that the gates of hell was completely figurative, think again. In Turkmenistan, which is located in Central Asia, there is a giant hole in the ground that has been burning for at least five decades, and it’s called the “Gateway to Hell.”
Located around 160 miles away from the capital, Ashgabat, in the Karakum desert, the crater sit around 190 wide and 70 feet deep. While the reason behind the crater isn’t exactly known, many believe that it was due to a Soviet drilling operation that occurred in 1971.
Despite the five-decades that it has been burning, the government has chosen to finally put the blaze out, which is being caused by natural Darvaza gas.
President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov has talked about putting the so-called gate of hell fire out before. In fact, the first time he requested for experts to look into what was needed to expunge the fire was back in 2010.
The Soviet authorities decided that in order to prevent a possible disaster that could result from the spread of the threatening fumes would be to just allow the gas to burn off by setting it ablaze. But this resulted in a 229-foot wide and 65-foot deep crater which has be on fire since then. Since then, it has become one of the country’s biggest tourist attractions.
It was also renamed “Shining of Karakum” in 2018 by the government.
Just recently, a report from AFP shared that President Berdymukhamedov explained that the gas crater “negatively affects both the environment and the health of the people living nearby.”
In addition, he said in a televised statement, “We are losing valuable natural resources for which we could get significant profits and use them for improving the well-being of our people,” adding that government officials need to “find a solution to extinguish the fire.”
In a report by VICE, it also shared how Turkmenistan is known to have the fourth-largest known reserve of natural gas in the whole world, and moreover, the country and it’s economy is dependent on their export of this raw and natural resource, mostly to Russia and China.
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