Icelandic police declared a state of emergency on Saturday as lava erupted from a new volcanic fissure on the Reykjanes Peninsula, the fourth eruption to hit the area since December.
“A volcanic eruption has begun between Stori-Skogfell and Hagafell on the Reykjanes Peninsula,” a statement from the Icelandic Meteorological Office (IMO) said. Live video images showed incandescent lava and clouds of smoke.
Iceland's Department of Civil Protection and Emergency Management announced that it had sent a helicopter to determine the exact location of the new fissure. The authority also said police had declared a state of emergency due to the eruption.
According to the IMO, it occurred near the same location as a previous eruption on February 8. The lava appeared to flow south toward dikes built to protect the fishing village of Grindavik, he said.
Shortly after 22:00 GMT, “the southern lava front was only 200 meters away.” [656 feet] from the barriers on the east side of Grindavik and moving at a speed of approximately one kilometer per hour,” he added.
Hundreds of people were evacuated from the Blue Lagoon thermal spa, one of Iceland's main tourist attractions, when the eruption began, national broadcaster RUV said.
No flight disruptions were reported at nearby Keflavik, Iceland's main airport.
The eruption site is located a few kilometers northeast of Grindavik, a coastal town of 3,800 people about 50 kilometers (30 miles) southwest of Iceland's capital, Reykjavik, which was evacuated before the initial eruption in December. . Some residents who had returned to their homes were evacuated again on Saturday.
Grindavik was evacuated in November when the Svartsengi volcanic system woke up after almost 800 years with a series of earthquakes that opened large cracks in the ground north of the city.
The volcano finally erupted on December 18, sending lava away from Grindavik. A second eruption that began on January 14 sent lava toward the city. Defensive walls that had been reinforced after the first eruption stopped some of the flow, but several buildings were consumed by the lava.
Both eruptions lasted only a few days. A third eruption began on February 8. It was extinguished within hours, but not before a river of lava swallowed a pipe, cutting off heat and hot water to thousands of people.
RUV quoted geophysicist Magnus Tumi Gudmundsson as saying the latest eruption is the most powerful yet. The IMO said some of the lava was flowing into defensive barriers around Grindavik.
Iceland, which sits above a volcanic hot spot in the North Atlantic, suffers from periodic eruptions and has plenty of experience dealing with them. The most disruptive in recent times was the eruption of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano in 2010, which spewed huge clouds of ash into the atmosphere and caused widespread airspace closures in Europe.
No confirmed deaths have been reported from any of the recent eruptions, but one worker was reported missing after falling into a fissure opened by the volcano.
