A volcano in southwestern Iceland erupted on Sunday, as reported this morning by state broadcaster RUV, becoming the fifth eruption on the Reykjanes Peninsula since 2021.
On this occasion, the town, of about 4,000 inhabitants, has once again been evacuated by order of the authorities during the early morning due to an intense night of seismic activity.
Seismic activity accelerated sharply overnight and the few dozen residents resettled in Grindavik were evacuated around 3 a.m. (local time), according to Icelandic public radio and television.
The eruption began around 8 a.m. north of Grindavik, according to the Icelandic Meteorological Office, and surveillance footage shows large flows of bright orange lava along a fissure in the Icelandic sunrise.
“A crack has opened on both sides of the defenses that began to be built north of Grindavík,” the IMO writes in its bulletin.
“According to measurements taken by the coast guard helicopter, the perimeter is now about 450 meters from the northernmost houses in the city,” he continues.
This is the fifth volcanic eruption in Iceland in almost three years; The previous one took place on the afternoon of December 18 in the same area, located about forty kilometers southwest of the capital, Reykjavík.
Grindavik, a small town of 4,000, was evacuated on Nov. 11 as a precaution after hundreds of earthquakes caused by the movement of magma beneath the Earth's crust, a precursor to a volcanic eruption.
These earthquakes damaged the city, creating large cracks in roads and in homes and public buildings.
Shortly after the December 18 eruption, residents were allowed to return there briefly and then permanently from December 23, before being urgently evacuated overnight. However, only a few dozen residents had returned to their homes.
On Saturday night, authorities issued an order to evacuate the city by Monday due to seismic activity and its impact on existing cracks in the city. So they had to pick up the pace overnight.
This decision also follows the disappearance on Wednesday of a 51-year-old Icelander who was working to patch a crack in a private garden when the ground suddenly gave way under his feet.
After intense searches for 48 hours, the authorities decided to end them on Friday night due to the danger of the place.
The man, who was not found, had fallen more than thirty meters into a crevasse.
The authorities are closely monitoring the Svartsengi geothermal power plant, located in the same area and which supplies electricity and water to some 30,000 inhabitants of the region, and whose facilities are protected by a wall.
"What matters is where the lava flows. Now it is very important to control it," explained Kristín Jónsdóttir, an IMO volcanologist at the RUV.
Until the March 2021 eruption, the Reykjanes Peninsula, south of the capital Reykjavik, had been eruption-free for eight centuries.
There were four others, in August 2022 and July 2023, on December 18, 2023 and this Sunday morning, a sign, for volcanologists, of a resumption of volcanic activity in the region.
Four days after the Dec. 18 eruption, authorities declared that volcanic activity had stopped but could not say whether the eruption had ended, due to possible lava flows underground.
Thirty-three volcanic systems are considered active in this country of fire and ice, the most volcanic region in Europe.
