Lava flows over the main road to Grindavik. Photo: Marco Di Marco/AP/dpa Keystone/AP/Marco Di Marco sda-ats
This content was published on February 8, 2024 – 5:39 p.m. February 8, 2024 – 5:39 p.m
(Keystone-SDA)
It is a natural spectacle with consequences for the people in the region: Another volcanic eruption in Iceland has cut off the hot water supply in the affected area. The Icelandic authorities therefore declared a state of emergency for the region on the Reykjanes Peninsula southwest of Reykjavik on Thursday. The hot water pipe was broken, causing a shortage of hot water in the Sudurnes region, the civil defense and police authorities said in the afternoon. She called on residents and businesses on the peninsula to save electricity and water. The municipality of Reykjanesbær announced that kindergartens, primary schools and other facilities should remain closed until supplies are restored.
The third volcanic eruption on the peninsula in just eight weeks began on Thursday morning. At around 6:00 a.m. (local time) a crack in the earth, estimated to be three kilometers long, opened north of the coastal town of Grindavík, from which glowing red lava then bubbled up. According to the weather authority Vedurstofa, the lava fountains northeast of the Sylingarfell mountain reached a height of around 50 to 80 meters. The steam cloud even rose to a height of around three kilometers.
A lava field quickly formed around the crack, as seen in live streams from broadcaster RÚV and in aerial photos taken by authorities. The lava, which was initially glowing red and then cooled black, stood out clearly from the surrounding snowy landscape.
How long the outbreak will last this time is unclear. However, experts expected that he would be able to lie down again within a few days. According to the weather authority, it had already lost strength in the afternoon.
In recent days, the authority had recorded a new accumulation of several million cubic meters of magma beneath the volcanic area on the Reykjanes Peninsula and therefore warned that the likelihood of another eruption in the near future had increased. On Thursday morning, the new eruption was announced with another swarm of earthquakes.
The sixth outbreak since 2021
It is the sixth eruption of this type on the peninsula since 2021 and the third since mid-December alone. In the most recent eruption in mid-January, the lava also reached the foothills of the previously evacuated town of Grindavík and destroyed three houses there – it was the first time in half a century that homes had been destroyed by lava masses in an eruption on the North Atlantic island.
Experts assessed the location of the eruption site to be more favorable this time than in the previous eruption. A lava flow towards Grindavík was considered unlikely. Later, however, the lava also flowed over a main road in the area, the Grindavíkurvegur, and over the Njardvíkuræd hot water pipeline, which runs from the Svartsengi geothermal power plant to the town of Njardvík, which is in close proximity to Iceland’s Keflavík International Airport.
The airport was temporarily without warm water, but this initially had no major consequences for airport operations. The Blue Lagoon, a geothermal bath that is one of the highlights of a trip to Iceland for many tourists with its white-blue water and is located right next to the Svartsengi power plant, was evacuated and temporarily closed as a precaution.
The eruptions of recent years do not look like what you would imagine a classic volcanic eruption to be: the lava does not bubble up from a volcanic mountain, but flows out of an elongated crack in the earth, which is why this type of eruption is also known as a fissure eruption . Unlike the eruption of the Eyjafjallajökull volcanic glacier in 2010, such eruptions do not produce a large ash cloud – with such a kilometer-high cloud, Eyjafjallajökull paralyzed international air traffic for days.