The volcano in Iceland erupted on Saturday evening for the fourth time in the past three months, ejecting orange streams of lava into the night sky.
The Icelandic Meteorological Office reported that the eruption opened a crack in the ground nearly 2 miles long between the mountains of Stra-Skoggfell and Hagafell on the Reykjanes Peninsula.
The Meteorological Service had been warning for several weeks that magma—semi-molten rock—was accumulating underground, making an eruption likely.
Hundreds of people were evacuated from the Blue Lagoon thermal resort, one of Iceland's main tourist attractions, when the eruption began, according to the national broadcaster RUV.
No disruptions in air traffic were reported at Keflavík, Iceland’s main airport, which is located nearby.
The eruption site is located several miles northeast of Grindavík, a coastal town with a population of 3,800, approximately 30 miles southwest of Iceland’s capital, Reykjavík, which was evacuated before the eruption started in December. Several residents who returned to their homes were evacuated again on Saturday.
Residents of Grindavík were evacuated in November when the Grimsvötn volcanic system woke up after almost 800 years of sleep, following a series of earthquakes that created large cracks in the ground north of the town.
Eventually, the volcano erupted on December 18, spewing lava that flowed away from Grindavík. A second eruption that began on January 14 directed lava toward the town. Defensive walls, reinforced after the first eruption, stopped part of the flow, but several buildings were engulfed by lava.
Both eruptions lasted only a few days. The third eruption began on February 8. It subsided after a few hours, but not before a river of lava swallowed a pipeline, transmitting heat and hot water to thousands of people.
RUV quotes geophysicist Magnús Tumi Guðmundsson, who stated that the latest eruption is the most powerful to date. The Meteorological Service reported that part of the lava is flowing toward the protective barriers around Grindavík.
Iceland, located above a volcanic hot spot in the North Atlantic, regularly witnesses eruptions and has extensive experience in dealing with them. The most destructive recent eruption was that of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano in 2010, which released enormous ash clouds into the atmosphere and led to the closure of airspace over Europe.
Confirmed fatalities from the recent eruptions have not been reported, but one worker was declared missing after falling into a crack opened by the volcano.
