It has been just revealed that there’s a state of emergency declared in Island – Grindavik. Civil defense has decided to evacuate the town. Check out the latest terrible reports below.
Here is the relevant tweet about the matter:
10,000 oh they better evac
She’s gonna blow pic.twitter.com/jnOfy9bR4S— K | hump then fall era (@keybrackson) November 11, 2023
According to Reuters news agency, Icelandic authorities have successfully evacuated 3,000 residents from a town located in the southwest of the island.
The evacuation was carried out due to concerns of a potential volcanic eruption, which was indicated by a series of earthquakes and evidence of magma spreading underground.
The Icelandic Meteorological Office warned on Saturday that there was a “considerable” risk of an eruption on the Reykjanes peninsula.
This was due to the size of the underground magma intrusion and the rate at which it was moving. Thorvaldur Thordarson, a professor of volcanology at the University of Iceland, stated in an interview with state broadcaster RUV that “I don’t think it’s long before an eruption, hours or a few days. The chance of an eruption has increased significantly”.
Although the Civil Protection Agency in Iceland confirmed that this was not an emergency evacuation, it ordered a complete evacuation of Grindavik, a nearby fishing town.
The Reykjanes region has witnessed several eruptions in the last few years, but the current one is believed to pose an immediate risk to the town, as per the authorities. Increased seismic activity on Thursday led to the closure of the Blue Lagoon geothermal spa, which is one of Iceland’s top tourist attractions.
Reykjanes, located southwest of the capital Reykjavik, is a volcanic and seismic hotspot. The Fagradalsfjall volcanic system in the region witnessed spectacular lava fountains erupting from a fissure between 500 to 750 metres long in March 2021.
The volcanic activity continued for six months, attracting thousands of Icelanders and tourists to the area. In August 2022, a three-week eruption occurred in the same area, followed by another one in July of this year.
Prior to the recent eruptions, the Fagradalsfjall system, which is around 6 km wide and 19 km long, had been inactive for more than 6,000 years.
