Iceland volcano families won't be home for Christmas as eruption looms

18 November 2023 , 21:35

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Iceland volcano families won't be home for Christmas as eruption looms

Families from an Icelandic fishing town have been told they will not be home for Christmas as a volcanic eruption is “most likely”. Hundreds of small earthquakes are still rumbling under the Grindavik region in Iceland every day.

Experts at an emergency meeting on Saturday, told their Prime Minister, Katrín Jakobsdóttir, the magma is now “very close” to the surface. There is concern the most likely site for the eruption was Hagafell and that it could send lava flowing towards the country’s power plant.

‌This geothermal plant supplies more than 30,000 people with electricity and hot water. Bulldozers are currently in a race-against-time to dig ditches to encourage the lava away from the crucial plant as winter approaches.

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Significant damage can be seen throughout Grindavík following the tremors that have struck the town due to the series of earthquake (Andy Commins / Daily Mirror)

Kristín Jónsdóttir, head of the volcanic activity department at the Icelandic Met Office, says: “The magma intrusion continues to deepen and widen, but does so more slowly than before.”

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But Kristín says that this decreasing activity indicates that magma has reached very high up in the earth's crust. She said it does not now need much for it to reach the surface and the situation is “not unlike” what was seen on the eve of the 2021 eruption.

But residents were given some hope as they were told not too many houses had been destroyed. The most extreme damage was to pipes and roads.

Cracks run through a large part of the town, including the road by the local sports centre (Andy Commins / Daily Mirror)

In a message to the 4,000 evacuated residents, the Rescue Team told them: “Don’t give up. Grindavík is still standing and we are going back home again.

“We will do everything in our power to restore our town!”

The Icelandic Met Office say there is a "high likelihood" of a volcanic eruption.

There is a hot water trench that has been torn apart with a sinkhole that’s up to one meter deep (Andy Commins / Daily Mirror)

They updated their site on Saturday afternoon to say around 1,700 earthquakes had been recorded in the last 24 hours, 1.000 of those recorded since midnight.

The largest earthquake during the last 24 hours had a magnitude of 2.8 and occurred near Hagafell, 3.5 km away from Grindavík.

They have been saying Hagafell is "a prime location for an eruption"

Lucy Thornton in Iceland