Panorama of the burning Darvaza gas crater in the Karakum Desert at night

Darvaza, the ‘Door to Hell’: The Fire That Was Supposed to Burn Out in Weeks

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In the middle of the Karakum Desert in Turkmenistan, about 260 kilometres north of the capital, Ashgabat, a circular pit in the sand has burned for more than half a century. At night its orange glow could once be seen from kilometres away, and visitors called it the Door to Hell, or the Gates of Hell. Its official Turkmen name is the Shining of Karakum. The fire was not a volcano and not a natural wonder in the usual sense. It was an accident, lit deliberately, that refused to end on schedule.

The standard account begins in 1971. Soviet geologists were drilling for natural gas near the small village of Darvaza, then part of the Soviet Union, when the ground beneath their rig collapsed into an underground cavern filled with gas. The rig and its equipment fell into the hole, leaving a crater roughly 60 to 70 metres across and about 20 to 30 metres deep. Methane, the main component of natural gas, began escaping into the open air in large quantities. The geologists decided to set the gas alight, a standard safety practice intended to prevent a larger release or explosion, and expected the fire to burn itself out within a few weeks. Instead, the crater was connected to a far larger underground reservoir than they had realised, and the methane kept coming. The flames were still burning decades later.

Why the Fire Lasted So Long

Turkmenistan sits above the Amu-Darya gas basin, one of the world’s largest natural gas provinces, and the Karakum Desert covers roughly 70 percent of the country. The Darvaza crater did not tap a small, isolated pocket. It opened a vent into a connected reservoir, so that as fast as the fire consumed methane at the surface, more gas rose through broken rock and sand to replace it. The flames at the bottom of the crater have been measured at temperatures above 1,000 degrees Celsius, hot enough to melt silica, according to NASA satellite observations reported in 2010. The fuel is overwhelmingly methane, with smaller amounts of ethane, propane, and butane, and traces of hydrogen sulfide that give the site its faint rotten-egg smell.

The First Descent

For decades, no one had been to the bottom of the crater. That changed in November 2013, when Canadian explorer George Kourounis descended into the pit wearing a heat-resistant suit and breathing apparatus, lowered on steel cables for a National Geographic expedition. He became the first person known to have reached the floor. At the bottom he collected soil samples, and analysis later found microbes capable of living in extreme heat. The descent confirmed what photographs from the rim could only suggest: the crater floor is a hostile environment of intense heat, unstable ground, and gas, and the fire is fed from many small vents rather than a single point.

The Government Tries to Put It Out

Turkmenistan’s leaders have repeatedly said they want the fire extinguished. The reasons are practical: the burning gas is a valuable resource being wasted, the methane released is a potent greenhouse gas, and the fire poses a health and environmental concern. The late president Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov called for measures to limit the fire as early as 2010, and in January 2022 he ordered the government to find a way to put it out completely, citing environmental damage, the waste of natural gas, and effects on nearby communities. A commission was set up, and the state gas company, Turkmengaz, began work on capturing the gas before it reached the crater.

The method was to reopen old wells and drill new ones in the Chaljulba gas field around the crater, drawing off the gas so that less of it fed the flames. Two wells were reported working from December 2024, and a third was finished in February 2025. The effect was visible. In June 2025, Irina Luryeva, a director at Turkmengaz, told a conference that the fire was burning about three times less strongly than before, and that where its glow could once be seen from many kilometres away, it could now be noticed only close up. Infrared satellite data from Capterio, a company that monitors gas flares, showed the crater’s heat output falling by more than three quarters over three years. Reporters who visited in August 2025 found only a few pockets of small flames in the hole. As of late 2025 and early 2026, the crater was still burning and still open to visitors, but much diminished from its former self.

A Fire With a Cost

The fading of the Darvaza fire is, in one sense, good news. Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas, and every cubic metre burned at the crater was a cubic metre that could not be sold or used. Satellite monitoring by the nonprofit Carbon Mapper put the crater’s methane emissions at about 1,300 kilograms an hour on average from 2022 to 2025, with individual readings higher still. Turkmenistan has signed the Global Methane Pledge, which aims for a 30 percent global reduction in methane emissions by 2030, and reducing the Darvaza fire is an important step toward that goal.

What Is Documented — and What Is Not

Documented: A gas crater near the village of Darvaza in the Karakum Desert, about 260 kilometres north of Ashgabat, has burned since the early 1970s; it is 60 to 70 metres across and about 20 to 30 metres deep. The fuel is methane from a connected underground reservoir, and the crater floor has exceeded 1,000 degrees Celsius. George Kourounis descended to the bottom in November 2013 and collected samples containing heat-tolerant microbes. President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov ordered the fire extinguished in January 2022, and Turkmengaz drilled and reopened wells around the crater from 2024; by June 2025 the company said the fire had fallen to about a third of its former strength, a decline confirmed by infrared satellite data. The crater was still burning, though much reduced, in late 2025.

Not documented / unverified: The precise date of the collapse is not established by a published primary source; 1971 is the commonly accepted date, but some local geologists place it in the 1960s. No official Soviet report of the accident has been released, so details such as the exact sequence of the collapse, the identity of the drilling crew, and whether anyone was injured remain unverified. Claims about the exact daily volume of gas released vary between sources and should be treated as estimates. Flagged as unverified: the popular statement that the geologists expected the fire to last “a few weeks” is repeated in almost every account but has no traceable contemporary source; it is plausible, given standard flaring practice, but not documented.

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