![]() ![]() No, their worries were of a different nature. Yulia and her friend, Lilia Orlova, were not concerned about breathing in asbestos fibers, which are widely understood in the West to cause lung disease. No sooner had she arrived than she was hurrying out to see the town's main attraction: The Hole. After suffering weeks of homesickness, she finally made it back to her beloved hometown. She found a new job in the Far North, in the city of Novy Urengoi, where she made 950 dollars a month - twice the salary she had previously earned in Asbest. A professional cook, Yulia has been forced to leave her home to look for work. This is our motherland." Talipova is outgoing and quick to smile. When I asked the two down-jacketed ladies about their history with the pit, Yulia Talipova explained: "My father worked in this hole for 20 years. ![]() Many generations of hard working Russians have labored in The Hole since the end of the nineteenth century. If you can brush aside thoughts of the carcinogenic dust that blows around this place, it's downright spectacular. The sight is at once impressive and surreal to anyone unused to the view of subsoil turned inside out. Workers at Ural Asbest, the company that operates the mine, refer to this spot simply as The Hole. Stairs carved into the pit's earthy sides and layer after layer of roads and rails stretched towards the horizon, almost replicating, on a much larger scale, the striated look of asbestos fiber itself. Delighted, the women watched from afar as trucks and bulldozers, tiny as toys in the distance, excavated the mineral on the bottom of the mine, which was then loaded into wagons and transported along railroads. Two young women in brightly-colored down jackets stepped out of the car to have a smoke and enjoy a panoramic view of what had been the town of Asbest's main industry and biggest source of pride for more than a century. Over six miles long and one thousand feet deep, it is the world's largest open-pit asbestos mine. ASBEST, Russia - On a chilly afternoon earlier this week, an SUV parked at the edge of an enormous hole in the ground in the town of Asbest, Russia. ![]()
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