An eruption has begun north of Grindavík
ruv.is
ruv.is
A man was lost in a crack in the town a few days ago, falling into the crack, then into a hole leading to a larger chamber underneath. The chamber had water in it experiencing tidal flow. His body was not recovered. If magma erupts into such cracks it could cause steam explosions (phreatic or phreatomagmatic eruptions).
Imagine owning the house over the road where the lava is heading right now, watching the disaster in slow motion. I guess the lava flow could stop right in front of it?
Edit: Nevermind ...
Of course it's better if that doesn't happen, but if it does there's solid support for the victims.
Not without an inconvenience, but it's almost like "every time it floods enough you get a home upgrade".
Then on top of that, flood zone residents have to pay extra for the flood insurance.
Their flood insurance costs less than it otherwise would because those of us without flood insurance are helping to pay for their flood insurance.
It's fine if you think that's the way things should work, but there's no value in pretending it's not happening.
What about lava makes it so we can’t redirect the flow around neighborhoods with these things?
> Benedikt Halldórsson of the Met Office says houses are not designed to withstand lava flow.
> »... You can expect the walls to give way from the load, and the heat in the lava is such that it burns everything in its path.«
Apart from the heat, since it's molten rock it also has considerable mass, and the lava flow continues pushing from behind.
I had an opportunity to interact with lava during a Hawaii eruption, and people could run/walk across red hot and flowing lava, but it would start melting the bottom of your shoes. This lava was definitely on the colder end of the spectrum, with a consistency like bread dough.
On the the other end of the specturm, there are very hot low viscosity lavas similar in consistency to soup. If you tried to step on that, it would be like falling into a pool.
There’s footage of them saving the machinery being used to build the barriers.
Go to about 11:58 on the timestamp in the bottom right corner, you will see the lava flowing along the berm (which is doing a good job of protecting a large building) while workers with bulldozers and diggers close the gap in the berm that the road goes through.
The fissure close to the town opens up at about 12:20. The lava flowing behind the berm reaches the road at about 12:50.
See https://imgur.com/a/7WGO9M6 ; yellow are the defensive lines. Red are the fissures. Black is the lava; you can see how well it was redirected.
Iceland is such a beautiful place.. although I was angry and sad for most part of the trip seeing how tourism changed Iceland over the last 20 years. As recently as 2014 we had to ask the locals in mostly sign language and paper maps how to navigate the Westfjords; there's 5G now in even the last corner of the island.. guess I'll need to resort to Svalbard and Greenland to go truly off-grid in the future :-)
Google Maps isn't too useful: "Sorry, we could not calculate driving directions from "Reykjavík, Iceland" to "Grindavik, Iceland"