Tourists and residents evacuated after volcano erupts
This is the ninth time the volcano has erupted since December 2023 and the country’s 12th seismic incident since 2021.
A huge fissure has opened up at the Sundhnúkur volcano, forcing people and tourists to flee from Grindavik (Picture: Public Defense Department of the State Police)
Footage shows thick smoke rising from the smoldering crater.
But despite the dramatic scenes, meteorologists said today’s eruption is a small one and buildings are safe.
Visitors from the Blue Lagoon resort – which welcomes around 3,500 people daily – and a nearby campsite, were told to move to safety.
'Nowhere is truly safe in Iceland'
Dr Matthew Genge, from the department of earth science and engineering at Imperial College London, told Metro what the latest eruption means: ‘The eruption at Sundhnúksgígar crater row is part of the new activity in the Reykjanes peninsula, that before 2023 hadn’t seen eruptions since the 13th century.
‘However, Iceland is a volcanic island and the entire country is built on the bones of past eruptions. Nowhere is truly safe, at least not for thousands of years.
‘The new eruption has been caused by a new batch of magma rising to the surface. Iceland is located across the North Atlantic rift, where the rocks of the Atlantic seafloor are being pulled apart whilst magma is generate by melting below.
‘These eruptions are difficult to predict. Imagine magma creeping around below the surface. It penetrates into cracks in the crust looking for ways to move forwards. It is given away by its heat and by the clusters of small earthquakes it generates as it shatters rocks. In the current eruption the magma has found a vertical crack to move along and has reached the surface to erupt lava flows and fire fountains.
‘How long this eruption will last will depend on how much magma is being fed from below. It could be days or months. What is likely, however, is this hot runny magma won’t cause the kind of explosions that stopped air traffic in 2010. Only magma that encounters water or has sat brooding beneath the surface has that explosive power.
‘With lava flows topography is everything, like a river they will run downhill and as long as the fissure they are erupting from doesn’t change, they are quite predictable. The main uncertainty is how much magma will be erupted.’
Around 200 people were staying at the Blue Lagoon resort when the evacuation order was issued at about 1am local time. The guests were taken to other hotels.
Residents in the Vogar and Reykjanesbaer towns were told to keep windows shut due to a moving gas pollution cloud from the volcano, according to the Icelandic broadcaster RUV.
The air quality is being monitored, and it has reached an ‘unhealthy level’ in Njarðvík due to sulfur dioxide being released into the air, RUV reports.
The magma opened up a large fissure measuring between 0.4 and 0.6 miles initially.
It has since widened to about 1.2 miles.
The Icelandic Met Office said: ‘The eruptive fissure is approximately 700 to 1000 m long. The fissure has been propagating to the north since the eruption started.
Local authorities are monitoring the magma flow and gas clouds from the eruption (Picture: Iceland Met Office)
‘Lava is mostly flowing to the SE and is not approaching any infrastructure.’
Seismic activity was first spotted deep in the Earth at about 1.20am, when an ‘intense seismic swarm’ was detected.
Flights at the Keflavik airport have not been disrupted by the eruption – unlike in 2010 when the Eyjafjallajökull eruption grounded thousands of flights across Europe.
Several planes appeared flying over the Icelandic airspace this morning, inluding past Grindavik, the Flightradar24 tracker shows.
While Iceland is well prepared for seismic activity, it can take visitors by surprise.
Last year, Metro’s visit to the Blue Lagoon came to a sudden halt because of an eruption on the Reykjanes peninsula.
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