REYKJAVIK — A volcano in southwestern Iceland, the nation’s most populated area, started erupting Monday with lava fountains reaching excessive within the air and the glow lighting up the sky miles away within the middle of the capital, Reykjavik.
The situation of the fissure, which is a few 2.5 miles lengthy and rising rapidly, isn’t removed from the Svartsengi Energy Plant and the city of Grindavík, which was evacuated final month due to heightened seismic exercise, resulting in considerations than an eruption was seemingly.
Within the preliminary evaluation Monday night time, volcanologists had mentioned that the eruption had occurred in one of many worst attainable places, posing a major and rapid menace to each the evacuated city and the geothermal energy plant.
However after volcanologists had an opportunity to fly over the positioning of the eruption within the Reykjanes Peninsula, the rapid scenario didn’t seem as dire as initially feared, although the dimensions of the eruption was bigger than anticipated and the route of the lava’s move nonetheless unpredictable.
“That is bigger than earlier eruptions on Reykjanes,” Magnus Gudmundsson, a volcanologist and among the many first individuals to view the eruption from the air, advised The New York Instances.
Lava is at the moment flowing simply 2.5 kilometers north of Grindavík, or 1.6 miles, in line with Kristín Jonsdottir, the pinnacle of the volcanic exercise division on the Icelandic Meteorological Workplace.
Nevertheless giant the eruption, with the city of Grindavík evacuated, it at the moment poses no threat to individuals, a police official, Ulfar Ludviksson, advised reporters.
Nonetheless, the authorities had been cautioning individuals to not get too shut. Hjordis Gudmundsdottir, a spokeswoman for the Division of Civil Safety, urged individuals to steer clear of the world, emphasizing this was “no vacationer volcano.”
“The fissure measurement is increasing quick,” she mentioned in an interview.
Whereas an eruption had been anticipated for weeks, following a collection of earthquakes, Monday’s eruption got here with none rapid advance warning. The Blue Lagoon, one in all Iceland’s high vacationer locations and situated close by, had reopened for friends on Sunday as concern that an eruption was imminent had diminished.
Hundreds of earthquakes had been detected in Iceland since late October, in line with the Icelandic Meteorological Workplace. In November, with houses and roads being broken, the authorities declared a state of emergency and evacuated Grindavik, a city of greater than 3,000 individuals close to the volcano.
The nation has seen this earlier than, quite a bit.
In simply the previous two years, there have been 4 eruptions on the Reykjanes Peninsula, Iceland’s most populated nook and residential to its capital. When Grindavik was ordered evacuated on Nov. 11, the authorities mentioned in a press release that the nation was “extremely ready for such occasions.”
“Iceland has one of many world’s only volcanic preparedness measures,” it mentioned on its web site.
The authorities raised the aviation alert to orange, as a result of a volcanic eruption might pose a threat to plane flying within the North Atlantic if ash spewed into the sky.
However as of Monday night time, Iceland’s most important airport, Keflavik, remained open, with this eruption not producing flight-stopping ash.
Probably the most memorable eruptions in Iceland’s latest previous concerned the Eyjafjallajokull volcano in 2010. Whereas that eruption was comparatively small and prompted no fatalities, the affect was widespread as a result of a ensuing ash cloud grounded a lot of Europe’s air journey for greater than every week.
The Eyjafjallajokull (pronounced EYE-a-fyat-la-jo-kutl) volcano had been dormant for almost two centuries earlier than it sprang again to life greater than 13 years in the past.
Iceland has lots of volcanoes.
Volcanic eruptions aren’t unusual in Iceland, which has fewer than 400,000 residents and about 130 volcanoes. For the reason that nineteenth century, not a decade has passed by with out one, Iceland’s vacationer web site tells guests. The prevalence of eruptions stays “fully random.”
The nation straddles two tectonic plates, that are themselves divided by an undersea mountain chain that oozes molten sizzling rock, or magma.
The present seismic exercise has not affected one in all Iceland’s best-known volcanoes, Katla, which some scientists fear is due for an eruption. Katla has erupted 5 occasions since 1721, at intervals starting from 34 to 78 years. The final main one was in 1918.
