The Maavalli, built to protect the village of Grindavík, has cracked in the most recent eruption, so the village has had to be evacuated again.
A volcano erupts again in Iceland.
This time, the nearby village of Grindavík is in greater danger than last time. This is the opinion of Åbo Akademi’s research director and geologist Jussi Heinonen.
– Yes, it is at least in greater danger now than it was before Christmas. We are clearly closer to that, but the intensity of the eruption has now been lower than before Christmas.
A volcanic eruption is underway in southwest Iceland, on the Reykjanes peninsula, where preparations have been made for an eruption for several weeks.
It is the same fissure from which the last eruption occurred in December.
– Now that same fissure has been activated, but now the eruption has taken place closer to the city of Grindavík. The lava flow is a few hundred meters away, advancing towards the city, says Heinonen.
The crack has gone through an earthen wall that was built to protect the village and prevent lava flows.
– So lava has also come from under the ground from the other side of the rampart. Heinonen says.
The eruption has already calmed down a bit and the biggest lava flow is away from the village.
– Here you have to follow and observe how the situation develops. The beginning looked really bad, now the situation is a bit easier. But here we’re talking about such hourly scales that you don’t know at all what will happen again tomorrow, says Heinonen.
It is also not worth waiting for the volcanic eruptions in Iceland to stop soon.
– It may be that we can expect an active phase like this for several years, if not even decades or longer, in this particular area, Heinonen estimates.
Part of Iceland is on the Eurasian and part on the North American continental plate. When they separate, magma can erupt onto the earth’s surface from the joint of the lithospheric plates. In this case, we talk about such rift volcanoes.
Iceland consists entirely of volcanic rock. In order for the island to exist at all, volcanic eruptions have been necessary.
– In other words, not exceptional in itself, but of course in the human time scale, there have now been an exceptional number of eruptions in this area, Heinonen says.