The town of Grindavik, in southwest Iceland, which has around 4,000 inhabitants, was evacuated overnight from Friday to Saturday due to fears of a volcanic eruption near homes, civil protection authorities announced on Saturday, November 11.
Iceland declared a state of emergency on Friday after a series of powerful earthquakes shook the southwest of the Reykjanes Peninsula, which could be a precursor to a volcanic eruption near Sundhnjukagigar, some three kilometers north of Grindavik.
Iceland’s weather service initially said an eruption was likely “in several days rather than in a few hours”after observing that magma had been accumulating beneath the Earth’s surface, at a depth of about five kilometers, for several days.
A “significantly greater” quantity of magma
But late Friday, meteorological services noticed that seismic activity was moving closer to 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. .
Authorities decided to evacuate Grindavik after weather services said it was “probable that a magma intrusion extended beneath Grindavik”. “At this stage it is not possible to determine exactly if and where the magma might reach the surface”they explained.
However, weather services noted that “the amount of magma involved is significantly greater than observed during the larger magma intrusions associated with the Fagradalsfjall eruptions”.
Three eruptions took place near Fagradalsfjall on the Reykjanes Peninsula, in March 2021, August 2022 and July 2023. These three eruptions, however, occurred far from any infrastructure or populated areas. Grindavik, about 40 kilometers southwest of the capital Reykjavik, is close to the Blue Lagoon geothermal spa, a popular tourist destination that temporarily closed earlier this week as a precaution.
Five hundred earthquakes
The town is also close to the Svartsengi geothermal power plant, the main supplier of electricity and water for 30,000 residents of the Reykjanes Peninsula.
The Icelandic Meteorological Office said five hundred earthquakes were recorded in the region between 7 p.m. (Paris time) Friday and 7 a.m. Saturday, including fourteen with a magnitude greater than 4.
Iceland has thirty-three active volcanic systems, the highest number in Europe. This North Atlantic island straddles the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, a fissure in the ocean floor that separates the Eurasian and North American tectonic plates.