Icelandic volcano erupts, sending lava stream towards city, Met workplace says

LONDON — A volcano erupted north of Grindavík, Iceland, simply earlier than 8 a.m. on Sunday, the Icelandic Met Workplace mentioned.

A Coast Guard helicopter flew over the location, sending images again that appeared to indicate lava flowing from “either side of the defenses which have begun to be constructed north of Grindavík,” the Met mentioned in an replace posted in Icelandic. The lava was about 450 meters from the city, officers mentioned.

“Judging by the photographs, lava is now flowing in direction of Grindavík,” the Met mentioned.

The eruption adopted an “intense” sequence of earthquakes that started round 3 a.m. close to the place a volcano erupted in December, the Met workplace mentioned.

“On the time of publication, over 200 earthquakes have been measured within the space, and the seismicity has moved in direction of the city of Grindavík,” climate officers mentioned in a discover posted earlier than the eruption.

The earthquakes had been within the Sundhnúksgígar crater, an space north of the city. The most important measured was an about 3.5 magnitude quake simply after 4 a.m., the Met mentioned.

Preliminary information confirmed Sunday’s eruption simply southeast of Hagafell, a mountain on the Reykjanes peninsula, the Met mentioned.

About 4,000 Grindavík residents had been evacuated in November, as tens of hundreds of earthquakes rumbled the area. These tremors signalled a excessive probability of an eruption, Met officers mentioned on the time.

That city was once more ordered to evacuate on Saturday, officers mentioned in an announcement forward of Sunday’s eruption.