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The town of Grindavik in southwest Iceland was evacuated on Friday night because of hundreds of earthquakes and fears of a volcanic eruption.
VOLCANISM – Huge cracks open the streets and hundreds of seismic tremors shake Grindavík. The Icelandic city with around 4,000 inhabitants about 40 kilometers from the capital Reykjavik is threatened with serious damage from the impending eruption of the Fagradalsfjall volcano. In advance, local authorities began the evacuation on Friday evening, November 10th.
“A large and extensive crack has appeared at various locations in the area Grindavik due to magmatic intrusion,” reports the account Volcaholic on X (formerly Twitter), which specializes in volcanic eruptions.
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A huge earth fracture tore up the streets and green areas of the municipal golf course. as you can see in the photos below.
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Extremely strong shaking
The movement of magma beneath the Earth’s crust also caused a very large number of earthquakes, nearly 800 on Friday alone, which could be a precursor to a volcanic eruption. “We are very concerned about all the houses and infrastructure in the area,” Vidir Reynisson, head of civil protection and emergency management in Iceland, told AFP on Saturday.
In view of this growing danger to the population, evacuations from Grindavík began on the night of Friday to Saturday. And Iceland declared a state of emergency on Friday after a series of strong earthquakes shook the southwestern Reykjanes peninsula.
Danielle Rodriguez, an American professional basketball player who plays and trains in Grindavík, described the emergency evacuation on X, explaining that her team’s Saturday practice was interrupted by powerful earthquakes. Then, as she and her friend were driving out of town, she and her friend were surprised by a jolt: the ground started shaking so hard that I had to hold on to the car, and to be honest, for 30 seconds I felt like the ground “I’m going to shake. Crack and take us both away,” she said after getting to safety.
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An “unprecedented” event
If the Icelandic weather services expect an “unprecedented event” due to the amount of magma that has accumulated very quickly beneath the Earth’s surface, they are currently unable to predict the exact date and time of the spike.
“This magmatic intrusion has subsided and the maximum depth was estimated at 800 meters below the surface,” Sara Barsotti, IMO volcanic risks coordinator, told AFP at the end of the day on Saturday. “We are talking about speeds for this process and volumes or inflow rates (of magma, editor’s note) that are much higher than what we have seen so far on the peninsula,” she emphasized.
There have been three eruptions near Fagradalsfjall on the Reykjanes Peninsula in recent years: in March 2021, August 2022 and July 2023.
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