- Iceland has declared a state of emergency due to a high risk of a volcanic eruption.
- People in the coastal town of Grindavík have been told to evacuate.
- Iceland has seen increased eruptions since 2021, a possible sign of a new era of volcanic activity.
Iceland has declared a state of emergency and told people to evacuate the city of Grindavík in the southwest of the country due to a possible volcanic eruption.
“An emergency level of civil protection is now in effect. This is not an emergency evacuation. Residents of Grindavík are advised to proceed with caution,” the Icelandic Met Office (IMO) said late Friday night.
But the Icelandic Civil Protection Agency website said that “there is no immediate danger imminent” and that “the evacuation is primarily preventive with the safety of all Grindvíkin in the first place.”
The IMO added that since midnight over 800 earthquakes had been detected around the region where magma, a hot liquid or semi-liquid rock that’s found under the Earth’s surface, was accumulating.
Volcanic eruptions occur when magma breaks through and onto the Earth’s surface.
“There are indications that a considerable amount of magma is moving in an area extending from Sundhnjúkagígum in the north towards Grindavík,” the IMO says on its website.
“The likelihood of a volcanic eruption occurring in the near future is deemed considerable,” it adds.
As a result of the emergency, the Blue Lagoon, one of Iceland’s most popular tourist attractions, which is close to Grindavík, was closed as a precaution.
The Reykjanes Peninsula, the area where Grindavík is located, has seen volcanic eruptions as often as every 12 months since 2021, with the latest coming in August 2023, according to the Icelandic tourism website Visit Iceland.
The eruptions in recent years could mean that the country’s western volcanic peninsula is entering a new era of activity after centuries of dormancy, National Geographic reported.
Ingibjorg Lilja Omarsdottir, who works for the Icelandic Civil Protection Agency, told the BBC that there was no risk of a repeat of the events that followed the 2010 eruptions of Eyjafjallajökull in the country, which shut down airspace over much of northern Europe.
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