(Reykjavik) Volcanic activity in southwest Iceland appears to have calmed down, Icelandic civil protection said on Monday, the day after an eruption which hit the port town of Grindavik, setting fire to three dwellings.
“The night passed without incident,” said Hjördis Gudmunsdóttir, spokesperson for Icelandic Civil Protection. “We went to observe (the site of the eruption, Editor’s note) and we can say” that the flow of lava is less significant there.
The movement of magma from the second, smaller fissure appears to have stopped, she added to Icelandic Public Broadcasting.
A volcano erupted on Sunday morning near the fishing port of Grindavik, in the southwest of the country.
Two cracks opened, one of which was on the edge of the first homes, according to the Icelandic Meteorological Office (IMO).
The lava flow reached the port city, already in poor condition due to cracked roads and cracked public buildings, setting fire to three empty homes.
The few dozen residents resettled at the end of December in Grindavik had been urgently evacuated the day before.
The city, which usually houses nearly 4,000 inhabitants, was evacuated for the first time on November 11 as a precaution after hundreds of earthquakes caused by the movement of magma under the earth’s crust – a precursor to a volcanic eruption.
They were then able to return home briefly shortly after the eruption of December 18 and permanently on December 23, but only a few dozen residents chose to resettle in Grindavik.
If many residents from Grindavik are reluctant to return to live there, others, interviewed by AFP, are not ready to abandon their “wonderful community”.
“I want to rebuild the city, it’s a beautiful city, there are great people and it’s really good to raise children there,” says Páll Thorbjörnsson, a real estate agent in his fifties who lived in Grindavik for twenty years.
For Erla Osk Petursdottir, 43, the biggest difficulty is “not knowing” how things will develop. “I want nothing more than to go back” to my hometown, but for now “we’ll have to wait and see.”
“People are afraid, we don’t know if there will be other eruptions, other earthquakes,” she told AFP.
Thirty-three volcanic systems are considered active in this country of fire and ice, the most volcanic region in Europe.