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The past few years have been like life tests beyond the last days. Fortunately, 2022 looks set to get off to a good start: Turkmenistan is poised to close a fiery hole called “Gateway to Hell,” likely to prevent riders of three other horsemen from the apocalypse from following their plague.
President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov said in a televised address on Sunday that government officials have resumed efforts to put out a long-running wildfire in the Karakum desert. Agence France-Presse reports. Despite its spectacular features, the valley has become one of Turkmenistan’s most popular tourist attractions in recent years.
Referring to the environmental and economic crisis, Berdymukhamedov called on officials to “find a solution to the fire,” according to AFP. The valley, which is about 200 feet (70 meters) wide and about 65 feet (20 meters) deep and looks like a fire door in another country, “adversely affects the environment and the health of nearby people,” he said. he said.
“We are losing valuable natural resources that we can maximize and use to improve the lives of our people,” he told AFP.
This was not the first time Berdymukhamedov had tried to close the gates of hell. He ordered firefighters to put out the blaze in 2010, but their efforts were in vain.
The Darvaza gas crater has been on fire in Central Asia since 1971 but is most often the result of a Soviet drilling accident when the ground beneath the drilling ridge hit a gas chamber. The story goes that Soviet scientists, disregarding the amount of oil that flowed under their feet, set fire to the barns to keep them from burning up the carbon dioxide that had been released and stopped the harmful fumes from spreading. The crew expected the fire to be extinguished within a few weeks, but after 50 years, the fire was still burning.
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