The Svartsengi geothermal power plant may be threatened by ongoing eruption nearby (REUTERS)
The eruption is the fourth in three years on the peninsula, a seismic hotspot, Iceland Monitor reports.
The rugged peninsula is located directly southwest of the capital.
The country, situated on tectonic plates moving in opposite directions, is nicknamed the Land of Fire and Ice and has more than 30 active volcanic systems.
Last month, Grindavik was battered with hundreds of earthquakes, prompting mass evacuations.
“Everything just seems so unreal, I feel like I’m in a dystopian movie,” Andrea Ævarsdóttir, 46, told The Independentat the time. “I’m just waiting to wake up from this nightmare.”
“Some of them [the earthquakes] were like a big truck had driven past your house, the bigger ones were like the same truck had hit your house,” she added. “Everything was shaking so bad, the floors were going up and down.”
After the town was evacuated, residents were allowed to return for limited hours to retrieve key items like family heirlooms and medication.
“Since the village was evacuated over a week ago we have been working to let residents retrieve their most heartfelt valuables in small numbers every day,” Jon Baglundsson, spokesperson for the ICE-SAR, a volunteer rescue team, told The Independent last month.
“People are mostly coming back for pictures of children, grandchildren on hard drives or whatever people store on their memories nowadays.”
Beneath the scenic landscape of Iceland, the country was experiencing hundreds earthquakes per day in the runup to the eruption, according to the Met Office.
The quakes rattled local houses and opened fissures in roadways.
Source link : https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/iceland-volcano-grindavik-eruption-earthquake-b2466251.html
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Publish date : 2023-12-19 08:00:00
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