Photos: Lava destroys homes in Iceland’s Grindavik
Al Jazeera
Iceland’s president said the country is battling “tremendous forces of nature” after molten lava from a volcano in the island’s southwest consumed several houses in the evacuated town of Grindavik.
President Gudni Thorlacius Johannesson said in a televised address late on Sunday that “a daunting period of upheaval has begun on the Reykjanes Peninsula”, where a long-dormant volcanic system has awakened.
A volcano on the peninsula erupted for the second time in less than a month on Sunday morning. Authorities had ordered residents to leave the fishing town of Grindavik hours earlier as a swarm of small earthquakes indicated an imminent eruption.
Geophysicist Magnus Tumi Gudmundsson said on Monday morning that the eruption had “decreased considerably” overnight, but that it was impossible to say when it would end.
Grindavik, a town of 3,800 people about 50km (30 miles) southwest of the capital, Reykjavik, was previously evacuated in November when the Svartsengi volcanic system awakened after almost 800 years.
