President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov of Turkmenistan wants to extinguish Turkmenistan’s internationally recognised tourist site, the “Gates of Hell.” The crater has a fire that has been burning for decades. The strange site is formally called Darvaza Crater, after the town of its location.
Berdymukhamedov appeared on state television on Saturday, ordering the officials to put out the fire. He stated that the site “negatively affects both the environment and the health of the people living nearby”, causing ecological harm and economic loss.
He also remarked, “We are losing valuable natural resources for which we could get significant profits and use them for improving the wellbeing of our people.”
The mystery
The fiery Darvaza gas crater is a surreal scene in the north-central plain in the expansive 3,50,000sqkm Karakum Desert in Turkmenistan. It is 60 meters (190 feet) wide and 20 meters (70 feet) at its depth. Though there are no records of the discovery of the burning pit, the most popular belief is that the Soviet scientists discovered it in 1971.
The story goes that the scientists were drilling in the desert for oil, when they hit a pocket of natural gas, causing the earth to cave in. This created three huge sinkholes from which natural gas leaked. To stop the ordeal, the scientist lit one of them on fire, hoping to prevent the spread. Since then, the Darvaza gas crater has been spewing fire.
The first to descend into the pit was the Canadian explorer George Kourounis, but he was unable to explain the origins of the pit.
He told National Geography that it looks like a volcano in the middle of the desert and added that the heat is unbearable. “Day or night, it is clearly burning. You can hear the roar of the fire if you stand at the edge,” said George Kourounis.
Local Turkmen geologists presume the pit was formed in the 1960s and was not lit until the 1980s. But the information is classified as Turkmenistan was under Soviet rule at the time.
In 2010, Berdymukhamedov visited the site and ordered it to be closed, while in 2013, he declared a part of the desert with the pit as a natural reserve. In 2018, he renamed it as the “Shining of Karakum”.