2024-01-15 10:28:01
REYKJAVIK, Iceland (AP) — Iceland faces “tremendous forces of nature,” the country’s president warned Monday, following molten lava from a volcano in the island’s southwest destroyed several homes in the evacuated town of Iceland. Grindavik.
President Gudni Th. Johannesson said in a televised address Sunday night that “a tumultuous period has begun on the Reykjanes Peninsula,” where a long-dormant volcanic system has awakened.
A volcano on the peninsula erupted Sunday morning, for the second time in less than a month. Authorities had ordered the population to leave the fishing town of Grindavík a few hours earlier, as a series of small earthquakes pointed to an imminent eruption.
The eruption “subsided considerably” overnight, geophysicist Magnus Tumi Gudmundsson said, but it was impossible to say when it would end.
Grindavík, a town of 3,800 regarding 50 kilometers (30 miles) southwest of the capital, Reykjavík, had already been evacuated in November when the Svartsengi volcanic system reactivated following nearly 800 years.
The volcano ended up erupting on December 18 and expelled lava flows towards Grindavík. The residents received permission to return to their homes on December 22.
Since then, emergency workers have built defensive walls that stopped much of the lava flow from the new eruption before it reached the town.
No one has died in the eruptions, although one worker was missing following falling into a crack opened by the volcano, according to reports.
“We still do not know how this eruption will develop, but we must take the measures within our reach,” the president said.
“We continue to hope for as good a result as possible in the face of these tremendous forces of nature,” he added. “We will continue our responsibilities and remain united.”
Iceland is located in an area of great volcanic activity in the North Atlantic and averages one eruption every four or five years. The most disruptive in recent times was the eruption of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano in 2010, which expelled huge clouds of ash and forced the closure of airspace in Europe.
The new eruption was not expected to cause large amounts of ash. Operations at Keflavík airport were continuing as normal, said Gudjon Helgason, spokesperson for airport operator Isavia.
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