Iceland is going through “huge forces of nature,” the nation’s president warned on Monday after molten lava from a volcano within the island’s southwest destroyed a number of houses within the evacuated city of Grindavík.
President Gudni Th. Johannesson mentioned in a televised tackle Sunday night that “a turbulent time has begun” on the Reykjanes Peninsula, the place a long-dormant volcanic system reigned. has woken up
A volcano erupted on the peninsula on Sunday morning. For the second time in lower than a month. The authorities had ordered the inhabitants to depart the fishing city of Grindavík just a few hours earlier thanas a collection of smaller earthquakes indicated an impending eruption.
The eruption “considerably subsided” in a single day, mentioned geophysicist Magnus Tumi Gudmundsson, but it surely was unattainable to say when it will finish.
Grindavik, a metropolis three,800 inhabitants About 50 kilometers southwest of the capital Reykjavík, it had already been evacuated in November when the Svartsengi volcanic system reactivated. after nearly 800 years.
The volcano lastly erupted on December 18, sending streams of lava towards Grindavík. Residents got permission to return to their houses on December 22nd.
Since then, rescue staff have constructed defensive partitions that stopped a lot of the brand new eruption’s lava circulate earlier than it reached town.
Nobody was killed within the eruptions, though there have been some A employee goes lacking after falling right into a crack Reportedly opened by the volcano.
“We nonetheless don’t know the way this outbreak will evolve, however we should take the actions inside our energy,” the president mentioned.
“We proceed to hope for the very best consequence within the face of those huge forces of nature,” he added. “We’ll proceed to satisfy our tasks and stay united.”
An space of nice exercise
Iceland It lies in an space of nice volcanic exercise within the North Atlantic and On common, an outbreak happens each 4 to 5 years. Probably the most devastating latest eruption was the eruption of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano in 2010, which emitted enormous clouds of ash and compelled the closure of airspace in Europe.
The brand new eruption was not anticipated to provide massive quantities of ash. Operations at Keflavík Airport are persevering with as regular, mentioned Gudjon Helgason, spokesman for airport operator Isavia.
With data from Related Press