Iceland town of Grindavik sinking further every day as residents await eruption
The Icelandic town of Grindavik is sinking further every day as residents hold their breath to see if an eruption will wipe out their town.
Kristin Jonsdottir of the Icelandic Meteorological Office (IMO), believes an eruption could begin in the next few days. The IMO are still warning their population of a “significant likelihood” of a volcanic eruption.
On Friday around 90 residents, only two allowed in each car, were escorted back to the abandoned town to collect valuables. Their time was strictly restricted to 30 minutes.
Two brothers, waiting to go in at the police checkpoint, told The Mirror how they were collecting their 94-year-old mother’s belongings, after she was evacuated from her care home. Tearfully they told how she has pleaded with them "I don't want to die alone" after being moved further away from her family twice since the earthquakes began.
Cracks running through the ground in Grindavik (Daily Mirror)
Residents are expecting a volcanic eruption in days (Daily Mirror)She is now living in a room with seven other elderly residents, in the capital of Reykjavik. Her youngest son Thrudmar Karisson, 53, said: “It’s eating them up alive. When the earthquakes were happening I was on the phone to her and I could hear the stress in her voice as she said ‘oooh there’s another one’.
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Brothers Smari and Thrudmar Karlsson in Grindavik (Andy Commins / Daily Mirror)“They could barely stand and the house was shaking and breaking apart. There’s a 30 cm gap down the side of the house now. She said she had never experienced anything like it in her whole life.”
He said his mum, Johanna Asigeurdottar, who has 31 grandchildren and great-grandchildren, had lost her husband, a fisherman, after he drowned when they were children. She then spent her life campaigning for the welfare rights of families in the fishing industry.
Jóhanna Asigeurdottar, mother of the two brothers (Andy Commins / Daily Mirror)
The care home in Grindavik that Jóhanna Asigeurdottar was evacuated from (Andy Commins / Daily Mirror)"We need to take care of our elderly in the last metres of their lives," her son said. "We need housing and rooms, especially for the elderly," he added.
After they had collected her possessions he said: "It was sad to see the lives and livelihoods of 3,700 people - many of their homes gone to zero. It is going to be a terrible time and difficult for many families."
Seismic activity has been constant for the last few days in the south-west of Iceland hit by earthquakes. The country has been shaken by more than 10,000 earthquakes and tremors in the last week, prompting fears this could disrupt the Fagradalsfjall volcano.
Mirror reporter Lucy Thornton at a road block near the town of Grindavik (Andy Commins / Daily Mirror)He explained how three weeks ago there was an "intrusion" (a fracture) and magma flowed into the "pathway" created. A corridor of lava, which has now grown to 15km long, is growing every day under the south-west peninsula of the island, looking for somewhere to escape.
The experts say this activity has created a type of sinkhole under the stricken fishing town, which is causing the land to subside by 5cms every day. So far it has fallen 1.2 metres leaving gaping holes in the roads and homes and businesses destroyed.
Grindavik had to be evacuated (Andy Commins / Daily Mirror)Porvaldur Poroarson, professor in Volcanology at the University of Iceland, says "something is stopping" the lava from escaping. "The event that unfolded on Friday afternoon hit such a speed that I was really expecting an eruption then," he told RUV English radio.
"But it didn’t quite make it up to the surface, it came close to coming up all the way, probably less than 500 metres from the surface. So there is something delaying it…Something is holding it back.
Thousands of residents had to leave the town (Andy Commins / Daily Mirror)"I would say it was 50-50 at the moment (for an eruption). Mother Earth does what she desires, she does not ask for permission. If this movement keeps on going, we keep getting magma flowing in, which maintains growth of fractures, this will end in an eruption…
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"At the moment the best site of eruption right now is offshore. It would produce an ash cloud and could be an eruption that lasts for quite some time." But he said there would be a lot of steam, so there would not be a repeat of 2010 where flights were stopped all across Europe for ten days.
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