AFP Emergency services in the event of a crack in the road surface
NOS Nieuws•vandaag, 14:15
A week after the evacuation of a village in Iceland, the danger of a volcanic eruption has not yet passed. Seismologists see that a magma tunnel slowly works its way to the surface. It is impossible to predict whether and when the volcano will erupt.
Nearly 4,000 residents of the village of Grindavik were told last Friday evening that the village is threatened by the magma. A bubble of about 15 kilometers long has approached the surface to about 800 meters. Toxic natural gases are measured in the area.
Scientists cannot predict where the bubble will break through the Earth’s crust. There is no crater like a volcano: the lava looks for the weakest spot in the kilometers of fractures in the earth’s surface. Lava fountains of tens of meters can be created.
Fracture planes
In recent days, small groups of residents accompanied by emergency services were allowed to return home to collect important belongings. They could immediately see the consequences of all the seismic activity: large fractures have appeared in roads and some buildings have already collapsed. The power also went out briefly in Grindavik, but that has now been restored.
Thousands of earthquakes, up to a magnitude of 3, have also been recorded in the region in the past week. Part of the village has already sunk more than a meter due to the displacement of the magma. Seismologists closely monitor the tremors to predict what the magma will do.
“It got really bad on Friday evening, when the house was actually no longer standing still,” says Belgian Hans Vera, who has lived in Grindavik for years. “Everything moved constantly with hard jolts in between. We thought: we’re not going to watch this anymore, we’re going to Reykjavik for a while.”
At the end of that evening it was clear that his house was no longer safe: the bump in the road that he had previously driven over had grown into a crack of half a meter. That evening the family found shelter with his sister in the capital.
A matter of years?
Seismologists do not dare to say how long the uncertainty will last. Long is the fear. “This peninsula, Reykjanes, is characterized by long dormant periods of 800, 900 years, alternating with active periods that can last for years,” explains volcanologist Karen Fontijn of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. She points out that the region has been unrest since 2021, although eruptions have never occurred in inhabited areas.
Experts take into account that the unrest in Grindavik will continue for a long time, if the town is not wiped off the map by an eruption sooner.
Vera nevertheless hopes to see his house again. It is built on a higher ground and might therefore be spared in the event of an eruption. “It will no longer be habitable, but maybe we can recover our belongings,” he says. “We’re holding on to that little bit of hope.”
2023-11-17 13:15:55
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