Iceland is facing a “worst case scenario”, the country’s police chief has said, as the Reykjanes peninsula experienced its second volcanic eruption in less than a month.
Residents of Grindavík evacuated their homes in the early hours of Sunday morning after “considerable seismic and magmatic activity” was recorded, said RÚV, Iceland’s national broadcaster.
The ground level had risen by several centimetres in the days before, “pushed up by magma rising beneath”, said Sky News‘s science correspondent Thomas Moore. “At first it opened a one kilometre gash” that stretched closer to the “thriving fishing town” than December’s eruption, he continued – and “then a smaller fissure opened even closer to people’s homes”.
“Fountains of molten rock and smoke spewed from fissures in the ground,” said Reuters, and lava has since “engulfed” a number of homes in the small town, said the Daily Mail.
The magma flow has “bypassed barriers” that were erected last month to protect Grindavík from a further eruption, said Sky News. Prime Minister Katrín Jakobsdóttir has described the situation as “highly serious”. President Gudni Johannesson said in a post on X that “no lives are in danger” at present.
Town evacuated just hours before lava pours from cracks in the ground nearby
