The little one Icelandic town Grindavik has had to be evacuated, for the second time in as many months, early this Sunday after a eruption of a crack of magma that is reminiscent of what occurred in November, when the 4,000 inhabitants of the city had to urgently leave their homes.

The new eruption It is smaller than the one then – this Sunday’s crack is almost a kilometer long anyway – but the magma expelled seems to have exceeded the containment barriers that were being installed and right now it is only 450 meters from the first homes in the north of the town.

Icelandic Civil Defense is closely monitoring the situation and remembers that most of the town remains empty because many of its occupants have not yet returned after the first evacuation in November. The rescue services are working to prevent magma from destroying machines and vehicles in the town’s industrial zone, a important fishing area from southwestern Iceland.

The area had remained inactive for almost 800 years until early 2020, when intense seismic activity began on the peninsula, and magma began to emerge in 2021. The current eruption is the fifth since then. Although eruptions are common in Iceland, residents have not experienced an event that threatens inhabited areas on such a scale since 1973, when part of a town of about 5,000 people was destroyed. buried under lava in the Westman Islands.

One of the most disturbing volcanic events in the recent history of the Nordic country occurred in 2010, when the ‘Eyjafjallajokull’ volcano erupted with an explosion that released a column of ash so enormous that it paralyzed air traffic throughout Europe for weeks, causing the cancellation of 100,000 flights and affected more than 10 million people.