The year is 1971. The Baltimore Colts beat the Cowboys in SuperBowl V, the US dollar is devalued for the second time in history, the south tower of the former World Trade Center is completed, and thousands of miles away in the village of Derweze, Turkmenistan, a team of geologists are explore the region’s extensive underground natural gas deposits.
As can be seen, there isn't a whole lot going on here.
While drilling, the team discovered a large cavern full of natural gas. Drilling into the area led the ground on which the drilling equipment sat to collapse, leaving a crater between 50 and 100 meters in size.
Let’s say you were responsible for this accident. Would you:
a) Engineer a secure covering of the hole, similar to Chernobyl’s sarcophagus.
b) Just leave, there’s nobody in that area anyway.
c) Eliminate the threat of disaster by lighting the gas on fire.
Any guesses? Turns out the correct response is “C.” Not knowing how much gas was in the cavern, it was nonetheless decided to simply ignite it all and in turn, prevent any hazard from spreading.
Usually when chemicals explode, you might see something like this happen:
That didn’t really happen in Derweze, or Darvaza as it is somtimes referred. Instead, the gasses just … kept burning. In fact, nearly 40 years later, the hole is still burning and has received the moniker of “The Gates of Hell.” It’s somewhat of an apt title, since the scene now looks like this:
In still frames, it’s actually quite beautiful:
(Photo Credit: John H. Bradley)
This post is tagged 1971, accidents, explosions, fire, international, Turkmenistan