2023-11-11 15:54:00
For safety reasons, the town of Grindavík with around 3,700 residents was evacuated. The nearby Blue Lagoon, the island’s biggest tourist attraction in the North Atlantic, was also closed. Because of the so-called earthquake swarm, the police declared a dangerous situation.
This level of warning system means authorities are seeing increasing danger and measures are being taken to ensure the safety of people in the area. “There was enormous damage to houses and infrastructure, but it can all be repaired,” Icelandic President Gudni Th. Jóhanesson told broadcaster RUV on Saturday. The dangerous situation continues. “But we are grateful that there were no victims,” said Jóhanesson. Pictures showed long cracks in streets, and on the Grindavík golf course the earth opened up several meters wide. The place resembled a ghost town, no one was allowed in.
More than 400 earthquakes
Since midnight alone, authorities have registered more than 400 earthquakes in the area on the Reykjanes Peninsula, southwest of the capital Reykjavik. Of these, 15 had a magnitude of more than 3.0 and 2 had a magnitude of more than 4.0, RUV reported. Bjarki Kaldalóns Friis from the weather agency said the number of tremors had decreased compared to the previous day. They are also no longer so heavy. Nevertheless, according to scientists, a volcanic eruption would occur if the earthquakes continued.
Volcanologist Thorvaldur Thordarson told RUV that the risk of an eruption had increased enormously. He expects hours or a few days – if the earth doesn’t calm down following all. Apparently magma at a depth of four to five kilometers had been collecting in a kind of storage chamber for two weeks, said Thordarson. The earthquakes are a consequence of this because the magma creates space for itself.
The exact time of a volcanic eruption cannot be predicted, said expert Friis. The exact location can only be estimated. The magma tunnel now runs under Grindavík. But it is possible that the eruption will take place under the sea.
“We can transform our smallness into strength”
The new earthquake swarm began almost two and a half weeks ago. Since then there have been thousands of quakes. Volcanic eruptions had already occurred on the peninsula in 2021, 2022 and this summer. They were each announced by longer series of earthquakes. There was no danger to populated areas in all three eruptions. This time, however, the Svartsengi geothermal power plant next to the Blue Lagoon was viewed with concern.
President Jóhanesson called on the population to unite. “Iceland is a small country,” he said. But this might definitely be useful. “We can turn our smallness into strength. Sometimes we are like a little family.”
There are frequent earthquakes and volcanic eruptions in Iceland. It was only in July that a volcanic eruption with spectacular images occurred for the third year in a row. Even then, thousands of emissions had announced the eruption.
While Reykjavik is the island’s main metropolitan area with almost 390,000 inhabitants, relatively few people live on the Reykjanes Peninsula. Keflavik Airport was not affected by the recent volcanic eruptions. Things looked completely different in the spring of 2010: the eruption of the Eyjafjallajökull volcanic glacier had plunged international air traffic into chaos for days.
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