Its wild Wednesday and today we explore the “Door to hell”.
Wait, is someone getting
a bit scared….Lol, please don’t be. Sit back, relax and strap in because its
gonna be a mind-blowing ride. It doesn’t get any wilder than this.
The door to hell, otherwise called ‘gate to hell’ or ‘crater
of fire’ is an active natural gas field in Derweze Village in the middle of the
Karakum Desert about 260km North of Ashgabat, the capital of Turkmenistan. This
area has one of the largest natural gas reserves in the world.
In the year
1971, a part of the Karakum Desert which has now become the DTH(Door to hell)
collapsed into an underground cavern, forming a natural gas crater. To prevent
the spread of methane gas, Geologists at that time made a judgement call and
set the crater on fire and guess what… It has been burning ever since then. I mean
we are talking about a fire that started in 1971 till now. This is like the ‘Great
Great Great Grandparent of all pipeline explosion and gas fire events’.
Let us delve into a brief history to fully grasp what we are
discussing. So you see, this site was identified by Soviet Engineers in 1971 as
a substantial oil field site. Upon drilling by these Engineers using their
machines, they found gas instead and at that instant, the ground beneath the
drilling rig gave way and collapsed into a wide crater. To prevent the release
of possibly poisonous gases to the atmosphere, the Engineers decided to set the
gas in the crater on fire after they
calculated that the fire would be out in a matter of days. Well, over 4 decades
down the line, the fire still burns like it just started yesterday.
The name DTH was ascribed to the crater by the people of
Derweze Village because of the boiling mud, extremely hot fire and unique
measurement of the crater.
The crater has a total area of 5350 metres square,
diameter of about 70m(230ft), depth of about 20m(66ft) and width of about
60m(200ft) and as usual, a unique scenario such as this has now become a
tourist attraction area with a few explorers venturing some distance into the
crater to analyse its soil sample.
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Wow! People actually live around there? Fire that burns on gases are hard to put out and this one has been burning since 1971.. nature is freaky sometimes
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