A new volcano erupted on the Reykjanes Peninsula in southwestern Iceland late on Thursday, spewing lava into the air in the sixth eruption to hit the region since December last year, authorities said.
Live video images showed orange lava bursting out of a long fissure, illuminating the billowing smoke rising up into the night sky.
“A volcanic eruption has begun. A fissure has opened east of Sylingarfell,” the Icelandic Meteorological Office said in a statement, adding that the eruption had started at 9:26pm following a series of earthquakes.
Photo: AP
The office initially estimated the length of the fissure at 1.4km, adding in a later statement that it had extended to 3.9km in 40 minutes.
There was still “considerable seismic activity” at the northern end of the fissure more than an hour after the start of the eruption, it added.
An earthquake measuring 4 on the Richter scale was recorded at 10:37pm, the office said.
Photo: AFP / Public Defense Department of the State Police in Iceland
Dozens of people could be seen parked on the side of the main road from the capital, Reykjavik, to Iceland’s Keflavik airport to watch the eruption, a correspondent at the scene said.
Iceland’s national airport and air navigation service provider Isavia said in a statement that “flights to and from Iceland are operating normally despite the ongoing eruption.”
This eruption comes just two months after the end of a previous eruption that lasted more than three weeks.
Sudurnes Chief of Police Ulfar Ludviksson told Icelandic media that an evacuation of the nearby village of Grindavik was going well.
Ludviksson added that 22 or 23 houses in the village were occupied.
Most of Grindavik’s 4,000 residents had evacuated in November last year, prior an eruption the following month, and while residents have since been allowed to return in between eruptions, only a few have opted to stay overnight.
Speaking to Icelandic public broadcaster RUV, Magnus Tumi Gudmundsson, a professor of geophysics at the University of Iceland, said that unlike previous eruptions, there was little activity on the fissure’s southern end — the direction of Grindavik.
“So if this continues as expected, there is no lava flowing near Grindavik. I think we have to consider it good news,” Gudmundsson said.
However, the “night is young and we must continue to monitor this,” she said, adding that in general “it’s a more favorable position than the last time.”
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