Do you miss a proper cellar? A couple is selling a house with a lava tunnel

Do you miss a proper cellar? A couple is selling a house with a lava tunnel

Are you missing a proper cellar? Couple sells house with lava tunnel

When Suzanne and James Brierley bought 10 acres of land in the city of Bend in central Oregon in the United States in 2017, they had no idea what was hidden underground. They only found out after the purchase and couldn't help but be surprised.

They found a massive lava tunnel under the property. Although they received information from the seller that there could be something like this underground, the couple definitely did not expect that it would be such a massive underground space.

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Missing a proper basement? Couple selling house with lava tunnel

“The size literally shocked me. You can't even touch the ceiling there," James Brierley told local TV station KTVZ.

As can be seen in the video that local television shot with the couple, the underground spaces are so large that several people can walk through them side by side. The National Speleological Society, which collects data about the cave, started exploring the tunnel. Speleologists believe that the spaces underground are actually much more extensive than it appears now.

Task for new owners

In Central Oregon, lava tunnels are not extremely rare. There are exactly 400 of them recorded. The spaces, which were formed millions of years ago, were created when hot magma flowed through a lava channel. Subsequently, the channel was emptied after the end of the lava supply.

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The formation of a ceiling in a lava tunnel can occur either by the upper layers of flowing lava cooling faster than the lower ones, or by the upper part of the lava channel being covered deposits that a fixed ceiling will create. The formation of a lava tunnel also requires the lava to flow quickly, not to erupt explosively. Lava cools very slowly, so lava tunnels can be very long. In the Tsavo National Park in Kenya, there is the largest lava tunnel in the world, Leviathan, over 9 km long.

The tunnel in Bend probably won't be that long. Even so, the Brierleys believe that the new owners of their house will take responsible care of this unique "basement".

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