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Icelandic police declared a state of emergency on Saturday as lava spewed from a brand new volcanic fissure on the Reykjanes peninsula, the fourth eruption within the area since December.
“Volcanic eruption has begun between Storey-Skogafell and Hagafell on the Reykjanes Peninsula,” a press release from the Icelandic Meteorological Workplace (IMO) stated. Reside video photographs confirmed glowing lava and billowing smoke.
Iceland's Division of Civil Safety and Emergency Administration introduced that it had dispatched a helicopter to slender down the precise location of the brand new crack. The authority additionally stated that police have declared a state of emergency as a result of explosion.
In response to the IMO, it occurred close to the identical location the place the earlier explosion occurred on February 8. It stated lava appeared to circulate south in the direction of dams constructed to guard the fishing village of Grindavik.
Simply after 22:00 GMT, “the southern lava entrance was simply 200 meters (656 ft) from the boundaries on the japanese aspect of Grindavik and was shifting at about one kilometer per hour”, it stated.
Nationwide broadcaster RÚV stated lots of of individuals had been evacuated from the Blue Lagoon thermal spa, one in every of Iceland's prime vacationer points of interest, when the eruption started.
No flight disruptions had been reported at Iceland's most important airport, Keflavík.
The blast website is about 50 kilometers (30 miles) southwest of Iceland's capital Reykjavik and some kilometers northeast of Grindavik, a coastal city of three,800 folks that was evacuated earlier than the preliminary eruption in December. Some residents who had returned to their properties had been evacuated once more on Saturday.
Grindavik was evacuated in November, when the Svartsengi volcanic system woke up after almost 800 years with a sequence of earthquakes, inflicting giant cracks within the floor north of the city.
The volcano lastly erupted on 18 December, inflicting lava to circulate away from Grindavik. A second eruption, which started on January 14, despatched lava towards town. Defensive partitions strengthened after the primary eruption stopped among the circulate, however many buildings had been consumed by the lava.
Each eruptions lasted only some days. The third eruption started on 8 February. It subsided inside just a few hours, however not earlier than a river of lava engulfed a pipeline, slicing off warmth and scorching water to 1000’s of individuals.
RUV quoted geophysicist Magnus Tumi Gudmundsson as saying that the newest eruption was probably the most highly effective ever recorded. The IMO stated some lava was flowing in the direction of defensive boundaries round Grindavik.
Iceland, which sits above a volcanic scorching spot within the North Atlantic, sees eruptions usually and is very skilled in coping with them. Essentially the most devastating occasion in current instances was the 2010 eruption of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano, which spewed large clouds of ash into the environment and led to widespread airspace closures in Europe.
There have been no confirmed deaths from any of the current eruptions, however one employee was declared lacking after falling right into a fissure opened by the volcano.