Lava has slowed substantially and has been relatively stable since late Sunday. The most active areas are near the southern end of the fissure, where lava flow remained about 330 meters from Suðurstrandarvegur road on Monday morning. Footage of the eruption was being live-streamed by RUV, Iceland’s national broadcaster.
“There was very short warning time, because there was very little seismicity prior to eruption onset,” Freysteinn Sigmundsson, a researcher at the University of Iceland, said in an email. “The initial vigour of the eruption was large, so the hazard to people was high. But nobody was in the immediate area where it occurred, although a large number of people in the nearby Blue Lagoon.”
There was no information immediately available about the scale of damage or possible casualties. Photos and videos captured the night sky around Mount Hagafell and Mount Stora Skogfell turning molten orange as people watched and emergency services prepared to respond.
Icelandic police declared a local state of emergency, Reuters reported.
While volcanic activity isn’t unusual in Iceland, the recent activity occurred in a zone on the Reykjanes Peninsula that hasn’t been active for 800 years. Once a volcanic rift zone is activated, it’s not unusual for a quick succession of eruptions to take place.
“The overall activity of this volcano system is determined by the amount of magma flowing from the Earth’s mantle and into the shallow crust,” said Sigmundsson. “It has accumulated there prior to the recent eruptions.”
He and his colleagues published a recent study tracing the recent eruptions to activity last November when a 9-mile dike formed, acting as the main channel for magma to travel through to reach the surface during the eruption. The November activity was still the largest magmatic event at the volcano of the recent eruptions, he said.
“If the eruption will follow a similar trend as previous three eruptions, then it will stop in 1-2 days,” he said. “But it has been relatively steady today. So we need to see if this eruption will eventually be more long-lasting, at low eruption rate.”
Early Sunday, lava was flowing south and southeast toward the ocean but would take two days to reach the coastline at the current pace, the Meteorological Office said. If the lava reaches the ocean, it could send steam flying and, in some cases, cause explosions of lava fragments that can be dangerous to anyone nearby — but the office said it is unlikely the lava will reach the ocean given the development of the eruption.
The plumes of smoke and orange hues could be seen from the Icelandic capital, Reykjavik, according to photos.
Because of the volumes of magma accumulating underground, there was little warning of Saturday’s eruption before it came, the Meteorological Office said.
Grindavik, a town of nearly 4,000 people that was evacuated before the volcano’s first eruption in December, was also cleared of any residents who had returned, the Associated Press reported.
Reuters video showed patrons leaving the Blue Lagoon as sirens sounded to warn about the erupting volcano.
Abby Garcia, who was at the Blue Lagoon resort with friends on Saturday, told Reuters she mistook the “bright red hue in the sky” for a sunset. Garcia said she and her friends were rushed out of the pool and put on an evacuation bus.
Another witness, Melissa Ezair, told Reuters that the evacuation went smoothly and that she “wasn’t scared.”
“Some people drove cars, then others … took the bus to town. No one seemed out of control or crying or anything. Everybody was steady and … they prepared it very well and took good care of us to be sure we all got out okay,” Ezair said.
Photos from the Icelandic Coast Guard showed the view from a surveillance flight over the new fissure.
The closest airport, Keflavik International, remained open Sunday, and flights were not disrupted. RUV said this eruption was not generating ash — unlike the 2010 eruption of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano, which shut down air traffic across Europe.
As The Washington Post reported, that explosive eruption vividly demonstrated what happens when hot lava meets freezing cold water. Known as a phreatomagmatic eruption, the molten rock — magma — made contact with ice and meltwater and flashed to steam. But the volcanic system on the Reykjanes Peninsula is far from the glaciers of Iceland.
Joel Achenbach contributed to this report.
