Icelandic authorities declared a state of emergency on Friday after a series of earthquakes shook the Reykjanes peninsula in the southwest of the country, raising fears of a volcanic eruption in the area.
“The head of the national police… declares a state of emergency for civil defense due to intense seismic activity in Sundhnjukagigar, north of Grindavik,” a civil protection statement said.
“Earthquakes could become stronger” and “this series of events could lead to an eruption,” the government warned.
According to the Icelandic Meteorological Office (IMO), an eruption could occur “within a few days.”
Evacuation plans have been drawn up for the village of Grindavik, which has a population of around 4,000 and is located three kilometers southwest of the area where the seismic swarm (series of tremors) was registered on Friday.
The civil protection agency also announced that it would send the patrol boat Thor to Grindavik “for safety reasons.”
The “Blue Lagoon”, a tourist resort near Grindavik known for its geothermal spas, was closed as a precautionary measure on Thursday.
At around 5:30 p.m. GMT on Friday, two earthquakes, the strongest of which, according to the IMO’s initial estimates, had a magnitude of 5.2, were felt as far away as the capital Reykjavik, around forty kilometers away, and across large parts of the country’s southern coast .
According to the IMO, around 24,000 earthquakes have been recorded on the peninsula since the end of October, with a “dense swarm” of almost 800 earthquakes recorded between midnight and 2:00 p.m. GMT on Friday.
The IMO detected an accumulation of magma at a depth of five kilometers that, if it came to the surface, would trigger a volcanic eruption.
Since 2021, three outbreaks have occurred on the Reykjanes Peninsula, in March 2021, August 2022 and July 2023, all far from infrastructure or populated areas.
Iceland has 33 active volcanic systems, the highest number in Europe.
During its last eruption in 2010, Eyjafjallajökull blocked European skies and led to the cancellation of 100,000 flights, stranding ten million passengers.