Lava flow prompts evacuation
Icelandic police declared a state of emergency after lava began spewing from a new volcanic fissure on the Reykjanes peninsula on Sunday. Hundreds of guests staying at famous geothermal spa resort — the Blue Lagoon — were forced to evacuate after the violent eruption lit up the night sky with jets of orange lava.
The eruption was the fourth in three months and follows weeks of warnings from the Met Office that magma was accumulating under the ground, making an eruption likely.
It opened a fissure in the earth more than 3km long between Sto´raSko´gfell and Hagafell mountains on the Reykjanes peninsula.
Bjarney Annelsdo´ttir, a senior police officer, told state broadcaster RU´ V about 700 people had been in the Blue Lagoon when the eruption began.
A statement from the Blue Lagoon company on Sunday said its “facilities were temporarily closed” due to the eruption.
The eruption site is near Grindavik, a coastal town of 3800 people about 50km southwest of Iceland’s capital, Reykjavik, that was evacuated before the initial eruption in December.
Annelsdo´ ttir said there were very few people in Grindavik when the eruption occurred.
Grindavik was evacuated in November when the Svartsengi volcanic system awakened after almost 800 years with a series of earthquakes that opened large cracks in the ground north of the town.
The volcano eventually erupted on December 18, sending lava flowing away from Grindavik.
A second eruption that began on January 14 sent lava toward the town. Defensive walls that had been bolstered after the first eruption stopped some of the flow, but several buildings were consumed by the lava.
Both eruptions lasted a matter of days. A third eruption began February 8. It petered out within hours, but not before a river of lava engulfed a pipeline, cutting off heat and hot water to thousands of people.
RUV quoted geophysicist Magnu´ s Tumi Guðmundsson as saying that the latest eruption is the most powerful so far. The Met Office said some of the lava was flowing towards the defensive barriers around Grindavik.
Iceland, which sits above a volcanic hot spot in the North Atlantic, sees regular eruptions and is highly experienced at dealing with them.
The most disruptive in recent times was the 2010 eruption of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano, which spewed huge clouds of ash into the atmosphere and led to widespread airspace closures over Europe.
No confirmed deaths have been reported from any of the recent eruptions, but a workman was declared missing after falling into a fissure opened by the volcano.