A volcano has erupted near the fishing town of Grindavík in south-west Iceland, spewing fountains of molten rock that reached the outskirts of the town, less than a month after another eruption in the area.
The latest eruption began early on Sunday morning, hours after seismic activity had prompted authorities to warn of an imminent event and order an evacuation from the town.
Work had begun to build barriers of earth and rock to stop lava from reaching Grindavík, but these were breached and lava flows reached the outskirts of the town by mid-afternoon, setting some houses alight.
The nearby geothermal spa Blue Lagoon had closed on Sunday, it said on its website.
“No lives are in danger, although infrastructure may be under threat,” President Guðni Jóhannesson said on X, adding there had been no interruptions to flights.
Iceland’s civil protection agency said on Sunday it had raised its alert level to “emergency”, the highest on its three-point scale, indicating an event had started that could cause harm to people, property, communities or the environment.
The eruption marks the fifth on the Reykjanes peninsula since 2021. There was a powerful volcanic eruption near Grindavík on 18 December after weeks of earthquakes. The town’s 3,800 residents had already been evacuated weeks before as a precaution. More than 100 residents had returned in recent weeks, but they were evacuated again on Saturday.
In a separate incident, a search was called off on Saturday for a man who was believed to have fallen into a fissure in the town. Emergency services said they had done everything they could to restrict the danger to rescuers, but it was not considered justifiable to put their lives at risk.
Iceland’s positioning between the Eurasian and North American tectonic plates, which move in opposite directions, make it a seismic and volcanic hotspot.
In 2010, ash clouds from eruptions at the Eyjafjallajökull volcano in the south of Iceland spread over large parts of Europe, grounding 100,000 flights and forcing hundreds of Icelanders to evacuate their homes.
Unlike Eyjafjallajökull, the Reykjanes volcano systems are not trapped under glaciers and are thus not expected to cause similar ash clouds.
