Fishing town at risk as Iceland volcano erupts

Reykjavik — A volcano erupted in southwest Iceland on Sunday, posing an immediate threat to a nearby small fishing town although it had been evacuated earlier and no people were in danger, authorities said.

Early-morning video footage from the site showed fountains of molten rock spewing from fissures in the ground, the bright orange lava flow glowing against the dark sky.

“No lives are in danger, although infrastructure may be under threat,” Iceland’s President Gudni Johannesson said on social media site X, adding there had been no interruptions to flights.

The eruption began early on Sunday north of the town of Grindavik, which the previous day had been evacuated for the second time in a month over fears that an outbreak was imminent amid a swarm of seismic activity, authorities said.

Authorities have been building barriers of earth and rock in recent weeks to try prevent lava from reaching Grindavik, some 40km southwest of the capital Reykjavik, but the latest eruption appeared to have penetrated the town’s defences.

“According to the first images from the Coast Guard’s surveillance flight, a crack has opened on both sides of the defences that have begun to be built north of Grindavík,” said the Icelandic Meteorological Office IMO.

Lava was flowing towards the town and had come within an estimated 450m, the IMO said.

Based on flow models, it could take the lava a few hours to reach Grindavik if it continued to flow towards the town, an IMO spokesperson told public broadcaster RUV.

Volcanic hotspot

This was the second volcanic eruption on the Reykjanes peninsula in southwest Iceland in less than a month and the fifth outbreak since 2021.

In December, an eruption started in the Svartsengi volcanic system on December 18 following the complete evacuation of Grindavik’s 4,000 residents and the closing of the Blue Lagoon geothermal spa, a popular tourist spot.

More than 100 Grindavik residents had returned in recent weeks, before Saturday’s renewed evacuation order, according to local authorities.

Lying between the Eurasian and North American tectonic plates, two of the largest on the planet, Iceland is a seismic and volcanic hot spot as the two plates move in opposite directions.

In 2010, ash clouds from eruptions at the Eyafjallajokull volcano in the south of Iceland spread over large parts of Europe, grounding some 100,000 flights and forcing hundreds of Icelanders to evacuate their homes.

Unlike Eyafjallajokull, the Reykjanes volcano systems are not trapped under glaciers and are thus not expected to cause similar ash clouds.

• Indonesia’s Marapi volcano erupted on Sunday, with ash rising 1,300m from the peak six weeks after a fatal eruption, according to the country’s geological agency.

The volcano in West Sumatra province erupted at least twice on Sunday, the agency said, urging the evacuation of people within 4.5km of the centre of the eruption, with the possibility of lava flows in rivers and valleys.

In December, more than 20 people were killed after Marapi, one of Sumatra’s most active volcanoes, erupted and spewed grey clouds of ash as high as 3km.

Indonesia straddles the Pacific Ring of Fire, an area of high seismic activity atop multiple tectonic plates.

Reuters