credentials
Article reserved for subscribers
On the night from Friday to Saturday, the 4,000 residents of Grindavik in the southwest of the country had to leave their homes after numerous earthquakes. A 15-kilometer-long fissure has formed in the city through which lava could erupt at any time.
Rannveig and his family are used to earthquakes. For several years, the 39-year-old Icelander, who lives with her husband and two sons in the small town of Grindavik in the southwest of the country, has regularly felt the walls of her house shaking. It’s difficult to be different when you live in a region with strong volcanic and seismic activity, where neighboring volcano Fagradalsfjall has erupted three times since 2021. However, she had never experienced such tremors as in the last few days.
“It had been several days since the earthquakes were violent and woke us up in the night,” she remembers. But Friday was terrible. At the end of the day it was constantly shaking. It seemed like a truck was going to drive over our house every minute. The drawers opened, our dog panicked… And in between the tremors, he kept shaking. We had no choice but to leave.” A few hours after Rannveig’s departure, the authorities ordered the evacuation of about 4,000 residents of Gr