The country recorded more than 500 tremors between Friday and Saturday. Town of just over 3,000 inhabitants evacuated due to fears of possible volcanic eruption The town of Grindavik, in south-west Iceland, which has just over 3,000 inhabitants, was evacuated on Friday night (11/10) due to the fear of a possible volcanic eruption, the country’s civil protection authorities reported.
Iceland declared a state of emergency on Friday after hundreds of earthquakes shook the southwest of the Reykjanes Peninsula, a possible harbinger of a volcanic eruption near Sundhnjukagigar, about three kilometers north of Grindavik.
The Icelandic Meteorological Service initially said an eruption was likely to occur “in several days, rather than a few hours”, after observing that magma had accumulated beneath the Earth’s surface, at a depth of at least five kilometres.
But on Friday night, the weather service noted that seismic activity was approaching the surface and that magma was beginning to rise vertically toward the Earth’s crust between Sundhnjukagigar and Grindavik, suggesting that an eruption could occur sooner than expected. Therefore, the authorities decided to evacuate Grindavik.
Located about 40 kilometers southwest of the capital Reykjavik, Grindavik is near the Blue Lagoon geothermal resort, a popular tourist destination that was temporarily closed earlier this week as a precaution following the series of earthquakes.
The city is also close to the Svartsengi geothermal power plant, the main supplier of electricity and water to the 30,000 inhabitants of the Reykjanes peninsula.
The Icelandic Meteorological Service reported that 500 earthquakes occurred in the region between 3pm Friday and 3am Saturday Brasilia time, 14 of which had a magnitude greater than 4.
Iceland has 33 active volcanic systems, the highest number in Europe.
jpg (AFP)
Source: Terra
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