Iceland - possible eruption due near the Blue Lagoon

[KenAdams]

Is anyone following this?

https://icelandmonitor.mbl.is/news/news/2023/11/03/coming_close_to_an_eruption/

The main concern is the power plant next to the lagoon.

There are constant mini eruptions happening too - https://vafri.is/quake/

What happens to the home owners? Do you have “volcano house insurance”? Are these people now financially ruined and homeless?

Eruption has started!!

You can make out a glow on the left in the Grindavik cam. Town is now evacuated.

Those poor people. They must be so fed up.

That's a very long fissure again, and it does look like lava has breached the berm and is on both sides of it. All down to the slope of the land and how much lava keeps coming.

from the live feed it's really clise to the town.
how scary

I also wondered how effective a wall can be if a fissure can just swallow it up.

From the RUV English live feed

Residents woke up to sirens in the middle of the night
Hallgrímur Hjálmarsson is one of those who had to leave their homes when Grindavík was evacuated this morning.

"We woke up around 3am to the sound of sirens and then checked our phones. Then we saw a text message that had come to us from Civil Defense that there was an evacuation. We got up and left. This part of the process worked very well.

About 90 homes in Grindavík were occupied last night.

Lava just 450 meters from some Grindavík houses
The lava flows towards Grindavík and is just 450 meters from the town's northernmost houses, according to the latest information from the Icelandic Meteorological Office.

This estimate is based on measurements from the Coast Guard helicopter that flew over the eruption centers with scientists.

Lava appears to be flowing over the machinery used to build the defensive walls

It says elsewhere on the feed that the defensive walls were not yet completed.

Wow, some construction workers have been rescuing the excavators that were lined up along the outer berm wall. So very close to the lava! Incredibly brave of them.

Lava close to consuming building
The building standing right next to the lava on RÚV's webcams is a greenhouse run by the company ORF biotechnique. The lava is now heading towards the house and it's only a matter of time before it goes under.

According to Berglindi Rán Ólafsdóttir, director of ORF biotechnique, there are few or no valuables in the building, as it was emptied in November when the earthquakes on the Reykjanes Peninsula began.

The building was heavily damaged in the earthquakes, so there has been no activity in the building since then.

The house was previously used to develop a protein that will be used for meat production without slaughtering animals. Materials for the cosmetics company BIOEFFECT were also produced there.

This is awful 😞

The government has been working on an action plan and I believe it will involve providing people with new housing, at least if lava flows into the town. But in my opinion the town is uninhabitable either way. The risk is just way too high.

Yes there is natural hazard insurance but I think it goes beyond that if lava literally flows over your house. This is a national issue.

There is precedent from the Heimaey eruption in the 70s so I assume they will draw on that model.

Just heartbreaking to break up the community and presumably homes lost but also so many possessions (and pets?) I really can’t imagine people moving back.

There were even several people living in Grindavík who had moved there from the Vestmannaeyjar after the Heimaey eruption. Imagine that happening to you twice.

I can’t. Just awful.

Another fissure has opened right in town apparently.

Thanks, Puffin.

it certainly makes for an interesting housing market. “Property prices can go up or down. The house could go up in smoke or down a crevasse”

it’s just awful, I am glad of this thread and the information and insights. I hope no one else gets hurt as this unfolds.

It seems to be not on top of any houses yet, but literally tens of metres. No more than that.

It must be so hard to watch that lava coming towards the place where you live. At least it's fairly slow so you can get out.

There are earthmover working right now to increase the height of the wall, you can see them on the webcam. Literally the other side of where the lava is flowing.

Been watching Shawn Willsey's livestream he had control of a drone just now and flew over the newly-opened fissure just 100m or less from the northern houses.

Not a good situation at all.

How sad for the inhabitants of Grindavik. 😔 I was all for the 2021 eruption because it was in an uninhabited valley and, after assessment, possible to visit and observe it from a safe distance. This feels altogether different.

It’s the worst case scenario isn’t it, I had hoped it wouldn’t happen in the town. Those poor people 😓. I really hope everybody is safe

It's reaching the houses about now.

Utterly awful for the former residents.

From RUV

Eruption behaving in an unexpected way
"This continues to surprise us," says Benedikt Ófeigsson at the Icelandic Meteorological Office. He says that they see very clear changes in Svartsengi, which probably means that a new magma flow is on its way into the system.

"Things were slowing down after the eruption started, but about half an hour or an hour ago they started to pick up speed again. We are no longer seeing a slowdown in the town."

New fissure sees lava flow right at the edge of Grindavík
The new fissure recently opened near Grindavík has its edge only about 50-100 meters from the town, and lava has started to flow just a few meters away.

First house falls to lava
The first house in Grindavík seems to have fallen prey to the lava. On RÚV's webcam you can see how the building is starting to smoke.

According to information from Grindavík town, the house had not been moved into. The couple who own it live elsewhere in town, in a house itself badly damaged after the November earthquakes.

A new fissure has opened
A new volcanic fissure has opened, very close to the town of Grindavík.

Þorvaldur Þórðarson, a volcanologist, says the new fissure that opened just above the town has completely changed the situation.

"I'm hoping this will die out, but that's just hope," says Þorvaldur. It could be a protrusion that comes off. He says the worst case scenario is that the upper crack dies out, the one which erupted at 8am, and the new lower one takes over.

"It's pretty small at the moment with little lava flow but [because of its location] doesn't look good."

He says that in Grindavík there has been movement of old cracks and even new cracks are forming

"We know [too] from previous activity on the peninsula that these types of fires can last for quite some time."

"It's very ominous as it looks at the moment," says Fannar Jónasson, mayor of Grindavík. "This [new fissure] is a new situation compared to this morning. There is nothing you can do about this," he says.

Fannar says that the defensive wall has done its job so far, despite not being at full height.

However, he adds "This new opening to the south will do nothing good for us. There is little else to do but to wait and see what will happen and where the lava will lead in the future and the next hours and days."