Yeah, this isn’t good at all. Thankfully no one has been hurt, largely due to the swift action of the authorities early on, but from a property/infrastructure perspective the town of Grindavík is in real trouble.
Well someone did die falling into a crevass before the eruption, but yes the eruption itself has not killed anyone.
A small fissure opened right by the town, claiming 3 homes, it has since stopped thankfully. The work around the town building lava walls has been incredible, they even managed to save a bunch of heavy machinery that the lava was heading towards, tens of millions of dollars worth of machinery, they made it by the skin of their teeth.
This is a shot of the men rushing to drive out the heavy machinery as the lava approached. The eruption started near the lava wall they were building and it was very close.
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Last edited by Thor; 01-15-2024 at 08:09 AM.
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The eruption has stopped as of 1am this morning, so great news for Grindavík.
It is great news. My worry now is that the damage to infrastructure and people’s homes is going to be substantial, and will of course take some time to assess. Thor, do you know of anyone who is raising funds to help the displaced townspeople? I thought I read about someone raising 4M Kronur for that purpose somewhere but that doesn’t seem like a lot of money given the damage we’re seeing.
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It is great news. My worry now is that the damage to infrastructure and people’s homes is going to be substantial, and will of course take some time to assess. Thor, do you know of anyone who is raising funds to help the displaced townspeople? I thought I read about someone raising 4M Kronur for that purpose somewhere but that doesn’t seem like a lot of money given the damage we’re seeing.
Well, the damage is substantial, so many crevasses opened up, still a fair bit of quakes, and of course, after this last eruption stopped the ground is rising up in and near the town indicating magma building up.
At this point it looks more like the government will have to buy out the residents, about 120 billion krónur and we abandon the town.
Of my friends that live there, 3 that I know well, they are all at this point not wanting to move back, understandably.
The biggest problem is this area when it was last active which is much of the Reykjanes Peninsula, it lasted 100's of years with eruptions every few years all over this area.
So this is likely the start of a long period of eruptions which means Grindavík, Blue lagoon, Svartsengi geothermal plant are all just a matter of time before they get hit and destroyed.
Various groups is helping the refugees, pets, and animals, trying to get housing for all the displaced.
The government is working on buying out all the residents of their homes, since at this point we are not optimistic people can ever move back there.
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The island straddles the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, a crack in the ocean floor separating the Eurasian and North American tectonic plates.
Sunday's eruption was the fifth in fewer than three years on the Reykjanes peninsula, which had not previously seen one in centuries.
"After eight centuries of a relative break and a complete cessation of surface activity, we have entered a new episode of plate separation which could last several years – possibly decades," volcanologist Patrick Allard from France's Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris told AFP.
Even before the first of the five eruptions on March 2021, scientists "saw the ground distorting, with magma rising from the depths and seeping into" an area three to 10 kilometers (two to six miles) below the surface, he said.
As that magma bubbled its way upwards through fissures in the Earth, eruptions started to occur.
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So another eruption happened about 6 days ago, this one closer to the geothermal plant and blue lagoon, the lava flow in fact went over the road by the turn in to the Blue lagoon.
It since stopped but however cut off the hot water to most of the southern penninsula. They are working around the clock to build a road over the lava and restore heat to the south.
You can see a video where a youtuber is woken up at 6am to sirens blaring to evacuate the lagoon.
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