This Monday, Iceland is still awaiting what could be the most destructive volcanic eruption in half a century, which threatens to completely destroy the city of Grindavík and is already showing signs of being imminent.
Experts have detected at least 590 earthquakes in recent hours, all with a magnitude of less than 3 on the Richter scale, as reported by Icelandic public television. A magma tunnel stretches beneath the city of Grindavík, and it is impossible to predict when and where it will eventually form.
The apparent reduction in seismic activity in the area is also an indicator that magma is approaching the surface, Bloomberg news agency reported. According to geophysical models, the intrusion is estimated to be spreading slowly upwards and the magma is located 800 meters below the surface.
However, it is believed that an eruption will occur, and all parameters agree that it will reach catastrophic levels.
The town of Grindavik, located in the southwest of the island in the North Atlantic Ocean, where about 3,600 people live, was completely evacuated and the island government also closed several roads in the area to avoid risks to the population.
Magma has appeared in this area several times in the past two years, but mainly through small fissures that posed no threat. The last time a major eruption threatened an inhabited area was in 1973, when lava buried part of a village in the Westman Islands.
Icelandic authorities declared a state of emergency on Friday after a series of earthquakes near Grindavik, warning of a possible volcanic eruption. They ordered a preventive evacuation of that city, 50 kilometers from the capital Reykjavik. More than 2,000 earthquakes have been recorded in the past two days.
The Icelandic Meteorological Office, the University of Iceland and the Department of Civil Protection and Emergency Management concluded at a meeting on Saturday, based on the latest measurements of seismicity and ground deformation in the Grindavik region and geophysical models and risk assessments, that continued intrusion represents a serious volcanic hazard .
Iceland has about 30 active volcanic systems, the highest number in Europe. According to data from the Icelandic Meteorological Office (IMO), there have been about 24,000 earthquakes on this peninsula since the end of October.
Source: DN
