15 ms·

A Lot of Damage in Grindavík

308 points by perihelions 3y ago

pierat 3y ago
They've also mostly rescued all animals as well from the area, including animals in homes, along with sheep and horses in pastures. When the volcano blows, it should only be property, building, and road damage.
- repelsteeltje 3y ago
  > When the volcano blows, it should only be property, building, and road damage. Mind you, those roads in Iceland might be expensive, with luxurious built-in heating. ;-) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowmelt_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowmelt_system
  - bbarn 3y ago
    I can tell you for sure there are no such heated roads in Grindavík. The one in Reykjavík is on a street that cars can drive down, but in practice don't very often. Large plows would struggle there and the pushed off snow would clog the walking areas in a very popular tourism location.
- icepat 3y ago
  There's a non-zero risk of it going off in the ocean, which could cause ash fallout, depending on the magnitude of the blast. Property and infrastructure damage is not the only outcome here. We could end up with ash fallout and flight disruptions. There's also a major power station in the immediate risk zone, which is a major loss if it gets destroyed. If and when this blows up, it's going to be big. The question is just if it's big and causes fallout, or just big. And when we're talking about property damage, it's less damage and more "will the town be obliterated or not". The magma is most shallow under the town, and there's a 15 kilometer magma pipe extending to the ocean. So the possibility of the eruption happening in Grindavik itself is also very real.
  - 4ggr0 3y ago
    2010 showed what kinds of impacts can occur when a volcano erupts in Iceland. [1] > In response to concerns that volcanic ash ejected during the 2010 eruptions of Eyjafjallajökull in Iceland would damage aircraft engines, the controlled airspace of many European countries was closed to instrument flight rules traffic, resulting in what at the time was the largest air-traffic shut-down since World War II. > On 16 April 2010, 16,000 of Europe's usual 28,000 daily scheduled passenger flights were cancelled and on the following day 16,000 of the usual 22,000 flights were cancelled. By 21 April 95,000 flights had been cancelled. > IATA stated that the total loss for the airline industry was around US$1.7 billion (£1.1 billion, €1.3 billion). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_travel_disruption_after_the_2010_Eyjafjallaj%C3%B6kull_eruption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_travel_disruption_after_th...
    - icepat 3y ago
      Eyjafjallajökull was a special case, it was not an oceanic blast, but a blast under a glacier. Fjallajökull means "glacier mountain". The blast flash-melted several tones of ice, which caused the lava to cool rapidly forming the ash cloud. If my memory serves, the glacier was in the caldera itself. But the effect would be very similar. The water would vaporize and create an aerosol of ash.
- avar 3y ago
  > When the volcano blows, it should only be property, building, and road damage. People had the option to get their animals, but not everyone did so. If the eruption destroys the town some animals will be among the casualties, if they haven't starved etc. already.
DavidPeiffer 3y ago
I have found geology professor Shawn Willsey's YouTube channel to have high value, no drama interpretations of the situation in Grindavik. He has been posting 1-2 videos per day for the past few days as new information arises. https://youtu.be/xvlZOpZE2KE?si=c2_Ew7LDKHrEpoN9 https://youtu.be/xvlZOpZE2KE?si=c2_Ew7LDKHrEpoN9
- coryfklein 3y ago
  This is a much better introduction to what has happened this week; the original article gives absolutely no context about the related volcanic activity. TLDR; Grindavík is located in Iceland, a country known for its volcanic activity. Earthquakes and land deformation have exploded in frequency in the area under and around the small town of 4,000 people and geologists expect a volcanic eruption is imminent. The town has been evacuated.
  - ptero 3y ago
    To add a note that while 4000 people is a small town almost anywhere, it is over 1% of Iceland's population. So the impact on the country is non negligible. My 2c.
    - brewdad 3y ago
      It also sits about 5 miles from Iceland's only international airport, so could prove especially disruptive to the entire nation.
      - lastofthemojito 3y ago
        > Iceland's only international airport That's not strictly the case. For example, Akureyri has some international flights: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akureyri_Airport https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akureyri_Airport Keflavík is obviously the only major international airport in Iceland though. A while back I remember hearing a proposal about expanding the airport in Egilsstaðir to be capable of replacing Keflavík if (when?) it is disrupted by lava flow. I think it proved too expensive for much action to be taken though. It would be interesting logistically to see what would happen if Keflavík was knocked out of service.
Scarblac 3y ago
Looking for Grindavik news on X etc right now, there is already an annoying amount of video and images of erupting volcanoes, from previous years, or from somewhere else completely. Even though there is no eruption at all yet. Annoying.
- tomashertus 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - bitcharmer 3y ago
    What a bizarre comment to make
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - cdelsolar 3y ago
      It's not a bizarre comment. "Freedom of speech" is used in this case ironically, as a metonymy for the site's drastically decreasing quality since it was acquired by someone who strongly advocated for it during the site's acquisition.
- cryptoegorophy 3y ago
  Community notes need to speed up
- haunter 3y ago
  Am I using a different Twitter? I only see local videos no "annoying amount of video and images of erupting volcanoes, from previous years, or from somewhere else completely"
  - seizethegdgap 3y ago
    I was seeing a lot of what Scarblac said they were seeing, but looking right now at https://twitter.com/search?q=grindavik&f=live https://twitter.com/search?q=grindavik&f=live and it's pretty clean. You'll occasionally see the famous drone video from the 2021 eruption being touted as what's happening in Gridavik right now.
WXLCKNO 3y ago
Iceland is the only place I've been to twice in two years when traveling. I usually go a new place everytime but I simply couldn't get enough of it just once and had to go again ASAP. Hopefully this situation turns out better than the worse predictions.
- bmelton 3y ago
  Same. Wife and I went for New Years this year and it was by far one of the most satisfying vacations I've ever taken. Absolutely nothing about the place is overrated, and we lament how little of it we've experienced. It is as close to magic as anywhere I've been, and their New Year celebration is insanity.
  - cdelsolar 3y ago
    I went up to the hill in the center of Reykjavik for New Years and was astonished, completely astonished by the amount of fireworks that could be seen.
  - ctennis1 3y ago
    We have plans to visit for this coming New Years, (unless things get dramatically worse I suppose). Excited in reading your comment.
    - bmelton 3y ago
      If you can, see if you can get to a bonfire a few hours beforehand. Travel / tourism agencies can arrange this. Also, if you'd enjoy seeing the Aurora Borealis, know that due to weather, clouds, etc., it isn't very reliable, and it may be best to plan on multiple attempts at it. The experiences we had ranged from disappointing to terrifically amazing, but if we'd only gone the one time, we'd have left without having experienced it.
      - hef19898 3y ago
        Been there three times in winter, never saw an aurora brealis once... Still great trips so!
mrtksn 3y ago
What I find eerie is that they stroke out Grindavik from the signs: https://twitter.com/grindaviknews/status/1724286780914962487 https://twitter.com/grindaviknews/status/1724286780914962487 I know, they are doing it to inform people that they shouldn't go there but it gives it such a post apocalyptic vibe.
- 4ggr0 3y ago
  Well, to be honest, for Grindavik we could currently be talking about a Pre-Apocalyptic situation :)
  - Nifty3929 3y ago
    I wonder if this is a fiction genre. Can I read a book that starts with a happy town with not much going on, builds up to just before a catastrophe, and then ends? Maybe like Part 1 of Seveneves.
    - rob74 3y ago
      I read this book recently: https://www.amazon.com/Anomaly-Novel-Herv%C3%A9-Tellier/dp/1635421691/ https://www.amazon.com/Anomaly-Novel-Herv%C3%A9-Tellier/dp/1... - don't want to give away too much (that's why I'm not linking to the Wikipedia article), but it fits the genre you are proposing - except spanning the entire world, not just a town.
    - 4ggr0 3y ago
      Maybe you can find something on this list, https://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/pre-apocalyptic https://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/pre-apocalyptic I looked at a few books on this list, but not every book seems to really be about pre-apocalypse. Pre-Apocalyptic fictions sounds like literary edging :D
    - mananaysiempre 3y ago
      “The Doomsday Book” by Connie Willis kind of has that feeling for a while. I couldn’t really get into it, though; it’s undeniably a well-written book, just not the kind of book I wanted to read.
bandyaboot 3y ago
Have they evacuated the town? Edit: I see that it looks like they have but residents will be allowed in to retrieve belongings. Is there any chance that an eruption comes in the form of a large scale collapse above the magma chamber…or is that not plausible?
- bbarn 3y ago
  While anything's possible, the trend of recent eruptions in the Reykjanes peninsula have been more of the slow trickling small kind. They have also been relatively off the beaten path, so it's hard to compare ground shifting in the previous places since you likely wouldn't notice it after the fact like you will with pavement and buildings.
  - bandyaboot 3y ago
    Got it. Here’s hoping that this will be a continuation of the trend.
- rob74 3y ago
  It only needs a small scale collapse if your house is standing over the sinkhole while you're inside, so evacuation is probably still the safest bet...
  - bandyaboot 3y ago
    Oh yeah, I wasn’t meaning to suggest that evacuation might not be the correct course, it seems at this point not doing so would be irresponsible. Was just curious about the possibility of something very large occurring given the sinking above the chamber.
  - m4rtink 3y ago
    Also some volcanic gases that might be released are quite poisonous & can be blown by wind around the place.
KeyXiote 3y ago
Any public data on this? I would love to collab on some predictive modeling for cases like this. There are some sources but couldn't find anything comprehensive enough to be accurate, need more historical context comparisons etc.
- gorbachev 3y ago
  Icelandic Met Office probably. https://en.vedur.is/earthquakes-and-volcanism/earthquakes https://en.vedur.is/earthquakes-and-volcanism/earthquakes I haven't explored the site enough to see if they have downloadable datasets, however.
- saevarom 3y ago
  Here is at least some interpretation of data with interesting graphs, like displacement graphs etc: https://en.vedur.is/about-imo/news/a-seismic-swarm-started-north-of-grindavik-last-night https://en.vedur.is/about-imo/news/a-seismic-swarm-started-n...
pcrh 3y ago
Iceland has had active volcanoes all the time it has been inhabited. Does anyone know what the "traditional" response to these sorts of ground movements was?
- CaptArmchair 3y ago
  Historically? The 1783 Laki eruption comes to my mind. Back then, a 25km long fissure with 130 vents opened. About 14km3 of lava and 1km3 of tephra was emitted. Lava fountains were estimated to have reached between 800m and 1400m. Some 20-25% of the population died, 50% of cattle and 50% of the horse population perished. It is argued that this eruption was the catalyst for the French Revolution, as the amount of emitted gasses caused extreme weather patterns across Europe (and the world) throughout the 1780s leading to famine, diseases and social unrest. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laki In contemporary times, there's the 1973 eruption of Eldfell on the island of Heimaey. It destroyed some 400 homes and led to a temporary evacuation of some 5.300 inhabitants. By 1975, some 80% of the population had returned. Moreover, today it's the foremost fishing center of Island with over 1/3rd of the total fish catch originating from its harbor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eldfell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eldfell
  - avgcorrection 3y ago
    > By 1975, some 80% of the population had returned. Of course they had to come back to “home island”.
  - pcrh 3y ago
    >The parish minister and provost of Vestur-Skaftafellssýsla, Jón Steingrímsson (1728–1791), grew famous for the eldmessa [ˈɛltˌmɛsːa] ("fire mass") that he delivered on 20 July 1783. I looked this up, and found this: "In his introduction to the translation Guðmundur E. Sigvaldson classifies Jón’s Eldritið as a “scientific classic as well is a literary jewel.” [0] It chronicles the aftermath of the eruption in some detail (i.e. people did not flee the region, for some reason....), e.g.: >The poisonous compounds leaked out of the Laki craters caused, as Jón depicts so graphically, the skin to rot off the spines of horses, swelling in their heads, jaws, and joints, rotting insides, and shrinking bones. The sheep and cattle suffered similarly. The meat from these animals was “both foul-smelling and bitter and full of poison, so that many a person died as a result of eating it” (Fires of the Earth, 76). [0] https://www.medievalist.com/articles/strongjn-versus-the-volcano-an-eighteenth-century-icelandic-priests-account-of-a-moment-of-crisisstrong https://www.medievalist.com/articles/strongjn-versus-the-vol...
1-6 3y ago
[flagged]
omegant 3y ago
For anyone guessing how it could go to the town, just check the recent case of the La Palma volcano lava that runned over a town. https://youtu.be/kjg-1BemSOo?si=H_We-hOXtCHT3Wgc https://youtu.be/kjg-1BemSOo?si=H_We-hOXtCHT3Wgc The eruption in Hawai some years ago also destroyed a town and a harbor.
kseistrup 3y ago
RÚV has a liveblog with the latest news about the situation in English, Icelandic and Polish: https://www.ruv.is/english/2023-11-10-liveblog-reykjanes-peninsula-and-grindavik-396249 https://www.ruv.is/english/2023-11-10-liveblog-reykjanes-pen...
- kd5bjo 3y ago
  Note that the Icelandic edition [1] understandably gets more frequent and timely updates than the others. If you're ready to put up with the quirks of machine translation, there's a lot more information there to see. [1] https://www.ruv.is/frettir/innlent/2023-11-14-ryma-grindavik-vegna-nyrra-gasmaelinga-396985 https://www.ruv.is/frettir/innlent/2023-11-14-ryma-grindavik...
- jahnu 3y ago
  Your comment prompted me to look up how many Poles live in Iceland. Turns out they are the largest minority which is mildly surprising but shouldn’t be I guess. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poles_in_Iceland https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poles_in_Iceland
  - kseistrup 3y ago
    When I started reading RÚV I wondered what the red and white flag was. My mind tried with “Greenland”, but Greenland because of the Nordic affiliation, but Greenland itself has a population of less than 60k, so how many greenlanders could there be in Iceland? When the flag turned out to be Polish I had to turn to the Woodchuck Book and was surprised, just like you. I should have mentioned it. Thanks for the link.
  - thefringthing 3y ago
    I was recently in Iceland with some Polish-Canadian friends and they were amused by the number of Polish people we encountered.
______ 3y ago
That's pretty close to Blue Lagoon, one of the most popular tourist destinations in the area, which is now closed as a precaution: https://www.bluelagoon.com/seismic-activity https://www.bluelagoon.com/seismic-activity
- orlp 3y ago
  It's also a waste of time tourist trap. The normal Icelandic baths are much cheaper and just as good.
  - baz00 3y ago
    Maybe. Avoided it. Went to Mývatn instead. Turned out that it means midge-lake. Spent 2 days eating flies. They didn't bite but weren't tasty. I've never driven the fuck out of somewhere so quickly.
    - hef19898 3y ago
      Well, Myvatn is basically on the other side of the island... Cam only recommend the non-Blue Lagoon hot baths and tubs, easily as good and a lot cheaper.
  - esfandia 3y ago
    Maybe, but the surreal atmosphere when the sun rises, you are surrounded by blue everywhere, you are jetlagged from just having landed half hour ago, and you have a drink in hand is indescribable. I went to other Icelandic baths during my stay but nothing matched that experience.
  - YeBanKo 3y ago
    Not just as good, but better. There are no morons around you who are constantly live streaming.
RobertVDB 3y ago
Aren't earthquakes super common in Iceland? Or am I wrong on that?
- ajmurmann 3y ago
  Earthquakes aren't uncommon, but what's happening in Grindavik is more than a earthquake. They were having hundreds of quakes an hour, a fissure opened and magma might come up soon. All in a little town and near a geothermal power plant which also fuels the Blue Lagoon. This also isn't super far from the main airport and the road that leads to it.
- jwozn 3y ago
  You aren't wrong, but the topic of interest here is the volcanic eruption. They are also relatively common compared to elsewhere in the world, but most are small and not in populated areas. See: https://www.visiticeland.com/eruption/ https://www.visiticeland.com/eruption/
- bandyaboot 3y ago
  They are and they tend to be small because of the type of plate boundary they’re associated with. But when they’re coming in large swarms near a volcano which is the case here, it’s a pretty strong signal of an impending eruption.
- Scarblac 3y ago
  During Covid a new volcano erupted quite near Grindavik, that was very tourist friendly: close to Reykjavik, not too large or dangerous, nothing it could damage nearby, a few km hiking from a road. Many web cams were setup and lots of beautiful drone footage was uploaded to YouTube as well. It erupted again 2021 and 2022. So it's a well known volcano now to the Internet public. Now it seems there will be an eruption on the same fissure again, but a) there are many more earthquakes than before, b) the detected movement of magma is far larger, and c) it could erupt anywhere on a 15km fissure line, but right now it seems to do so right in the middle of the nearby town. So it looks like this time it will be a disaster. There is also a geothermal power plant that heats the whole peninsula nearby, as well as tourist attraction the Blue Lagoon, that are both at risk.
rob74 3y ago
What's interesting to see in the pictures is that they already built a detour around the fissure: it starts in the area of fresh asphalt to the right of the guy in this photo https://cdn.mbl.is/frimg/1/45/18/1451863.jpg https://cdn.mbl.is/frimg/1/45/18/1451863.jpg, then goes through an also freshly paved-over parking lot/former green space and rejoins the road in the background (behind the construction fences).
- saevarom 3y ago
  I think you are misinterpreting this photo. Nobody has been paving over the fissures in the town. I think it's a combination of moisture, different coloured asphalt sections, and light/shadows that tricks the eye. As you can see in this drone footage [1] the car park asphalt is darker, and the hot water pipes ruptured in the ground create steam that spreads moisture over the asphalt, making it darker. Also, you have a building next to the car park which makes it even darker than the street. [1] https://ruv-vod-clips.akamaized.net/76a26e8d-1190-492c-9163-eba4fa4134a3.mp4 https://ruv-vod-clips.akamaized.net/76a26e8d-1190-492c-9163-...
  - michaelcampbell 3y ago
    To be fair, they never said the fresh looking asphalt was a result of paving over the fissure, just that it's there.
mhandley 3y ago
In the last hour they have detected increased levels of SO2 in Grindavik, so they've evacuated residents who were being allowed in to retrieve their valuables: https://www.ruv.is/english/2023-11-10-liveblog-reykjanes-peninsula-and-grindavik-396249 https://www.ruv.is/english/2023-11-10-liveblog-reykjanes-pen... No signs of an actual eruption yet though on the cameras (the steam is a geothermal power station): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=804nPrAUAxg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=804nPrAUAxg
bell-cot 3y ago
@dang - might we change the title to "Spreading & Subsidence Damage in Grindavík"? With all the "Lava & Eruption!" hype around this situation, that would make what is actually happening now in Grindavík much clearer.
- hk__2 3y ago
  > With all the "Lava & Eruption!" hype around this situation, that would make what is actually happening now in Grindavík much clearer. Is it really the right place for it, though? HN is not CNN; if you want that sort of news there are probably better sources. > If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - bell-cot 3y ago
    True...but this is currently the #1 story on HN, so evidently "good hackers" find it interesting. And if the current situation is "nothing special happening", then let's not waste any good hacker's time with a pretty-ambiguous headline.
h1fra 3y ago
1m displacement is crazy, I can't imagine how much destruction it would cause inside a major city.
rwmj 3y ago
I hear in Japan the reason they have electric wires on poles and houses have individual gas cylinders is to provide resiliency during earthquakes -- the earth becomes a liquid.
- arbuge 3y ago
  Gases passing through dirt/sandy substances at high pressure will tend to do that. See for example: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/EImO4agHqOg https://www.youtube.com/shorts/EImO4agHqOg
  - m4rtink 3y ago
    Very interesting! Now I have to think how this could be used to make something productive! :D Maybe some sort of special bearing floating on the fludized sand you can turn of and stop/stabilize by turning thr gas pipe off ?
- nerdponx 3y ago
  Electric wires on poles are also more likely to get damaged by wind, ice, fire, and flood, either directly or by trees falling onto them. There are tradeoffs involved.
  - q1w2 3y ago
    They're also much cheaper to construct.
- SoftTalker 3y ago
  Getting OT but I've noticed in Scandinavian countries they use pavers a lot where in the USA we'd more likely have poured concrete or asphalt/tarmac. Sidewalks, parking surfaces, driveways, etc. Pavers would seem to me to be both more expensive to install and require higher maintenance. Is there a reason they are used so much?
  - InCityDreams 3y ago
    For the uk readers: I'm guessing 'pavers' are 'flags', or 'flagstones'. Humped a few of them in my time...thank goodness for Atari, and all that followed.!!
cvccvroomvroom 3y ago
Live webcam https://youtube.com/live/Qvw5qh5K4wI https://youtube.com/live/Qvw5qh5K4wI
j-a-a-p 3y ago
Somebody observed in this thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38233905 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38233905 seeing the town shake on camera
- q1w2 3y ago
  Seems more likely to be the wind blowing the camera - hard to tell
  - runarberg 3y ago
    Most likely wind. However this thread was from Friday and the ground was constantly shaking that day. I was there and there were rather large earthquakes like every 10-20 minutes (and smaller earthquakes every 20-30 seconds) between 16:00 and 23:00 (when I evacuated). It is highly likely that the poster in this thread was actually seeing earthquakes.
hlesesne 3y ago
Does anyone know how the large datacenters in Iceland are faring? I know that most of the big ones are north east (near the international airport in Keflavík). They were really popular for crypto miners, but have been moving into HPC very rapidly. I’d assume there is a ton of extremely expensive equipment less than 10-15 miles from where all this activity is.

308 points by perihelions 3y ago

They've also mostly rescued all animals as well from the area, including animals in homes, along with sheep and horses in pastures. When the volcano blows, it should only be property, building, and road damage.

repelsteeltje 3y ago
> When the volcano blows, it should only be property, building, and road damage. Mind you, those roads in Iceland might be expensive, with luxurious built-in heating. ;-) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowmelt_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowmelt_system
- bbarn 3y ago
  I can tell you for sure there are no such heated roads in Grindavík. The one in Reykjavík is on a street that cars can drive down, but in practice don't very often. Large plows would struggle there and the pushed off snow would clog the walking areas in a very popular tourism location.
icepat 3y ago
There's a non-zero risk of it going off in the ocean, which could cause ash fallout, depending on the magnitude of the blast. Property and infrastructure damage is not the only outcome here. We could end up with ash fallout and flight disruptions. There's also a major power station in the immediate risk zone, which is a major loss if it gets destroyed. If and when this blows up, it's going to be big. The question is just if it's big and causes fallout, or just big. And when we're talking about property damage, it's less damage and more "will the town be obliterated or not". The magma is most shallow under the town, and there's a 15 kilometer magma pipe extending to the ocean. So the possibility of the eruption happening in Grindavik itself is also very real.
- 4ggr0 3y ago
  2010 showed what kinds of impacts can occur when a volcano erupts in Iceland. [1] > In response to concerns that volcanic ash ejected during the 2010 eruptions of Eyjafjallajökull in Iceland would damage aircraft engines, the controlled airspace of many European countries was closed to instrument flight rules traffic, resulting in what at the time was the largest air-traffic shut-down since World War II. > On 16 April 2010, 16,000 of Europe's usual 28,000 daily scheduled passenger flights were cancelled and on the following day 16,000 of the usual 22,000 flights were cancelled. By 21 April 95,000 flights had been cancelled. > IATA stated that the total loss for the airline industry was around US$1.7 billion (£1.1 billion, €1.3 billion). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_travel_disruption_after_the_2010_Eyjafjallaj%C3%B6kull_eruption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_travel_disruption_after_th...
  - icepat 3y ago
    Eyjafjallajökull was a special case, it was not an oceanic blast, but a blast under a glacier. Fjallajökull means "glacier mountain". The blast flash-melted several tones of ice, which caused the lava to cool rapidly forming the ash cloud. If my memory serves, the glacier was in the caldera itself. But the effect would be very similar. The water would vaporize and create an aerosol of ash.
avar 3y ago
> When the volcano blows, it should only be property, building, and road damage. People had the option to get their animals, but not everyone did so. If the eruption destroys the town some animals will be among the casualties, if they haven't starved etc. already.

DavidPeiffer 3y ago

I have found geology professor Shawn Willsey's YouTube channel to have high value, no drama interpretations of the situation in Grindavik. He has been posting 1-2 videos per day for the past few days as new information arises. https://youtu.be/xvlZOpZE2KE?si=c2_Ew7LDKHrEpoN9 https://youtu.be/xvlZOpZE2KE?si=c2_Ew7LDKHrEpoN9

coryfklein 3y ago
This is a much better introduction to what has happened this week; the original article gives absolutely no context about the related volcanic activity. TLDR; Grindavík is located in Iceland, a country known for its volcanic activity. Earthquakes and land deformation have exploded in frequency in the area under and around the small town of 4,000 people and geologists expect a volcanic eruption is imminent. The town has been evacuated.
- ptero 3y ago
  To add a note that while 4000 people is a small town almost anywhere, it is over 1% of Iceland's population. So the impact on the country is non negligible. My 2c.
  - brewdad 3y ago
    It also sits about 5 miles from Iceland's only international airport, so could prove especially disruptive to the entire nation.
    - lastofthemojito 3y ago
      > Iceland's only international airport That's not strictly the case. For example, Akureyri has some international flights: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akureyri_Airport https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akureyri_Airport Keflavík is obviously the only major international airport in Iceland though. A while back I remember hearing a proposal about expanding the airport in Egilsstaðir to be capable of replacing Keflavík if (when?) it is disrupted by lava flow. I think it proved too expensive for much action to be taken though. It would be interesting logistically to see what would happen if Keflavík was knocked out of service.

Scarblac 3y ago

Looking for Grindavik news on X etc right now, there is already an annoying amount of video and images of erupting volcanoes, from previous years, or from somewhere else completely. Even though there is no eruption at all yet. Annoying.

tomashertus 3y ago
[flagged]
- bitcharmer 3y ago
  What a bizarre comment to make
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - cdelsolar 3y ago
    It's not a bizarre comment. "Freedom of speech" is used in this case ironically, as a metonymy for the site's drastically decreasing quality since it was acquired by someone who strongly advocated for it during the site's acquisition.
cryptoegorophy 3y ago
Community notes need to speed up
haunter 3y ago
Am I using a different Twitter? I only see local videos no "annoying amount of video and images of erupting volcanoes, from previous years, or from somewhere else completely"
- seizethegdgap 3y ago
  I was seeing a lot of what Scarblac said they were seeing, but looking right now at https://twitter.com/search?q=grindavik&f=live https://twitter.com/search?q=grindavik&f=live and it's pretty clean. You'll occasionally see the famous drone video from the 2021 eruption being touted as what's happening in Gridavik right now.

WXLCKNO 3y ago

Iceland is the only place I've been to twice in two years when traveling. I usually go a new place everytime but I simply couldn't get enough of it just once and had to go again ASAP. Hopefully this situation turns out better than the worse predictions.

bmelton 3y ago
Same. Wife and I went for New Years this year and it was by far one of the most satisfying vacations I've ever taken. Absolutely nothing about the place is overrated, and we lament how little of it we've experienced. It is as close to magic as anywhere I've been, and their New Year celebration is insanity.
- cdelsolar 3y ago
  I went up to the hill in the center of Reykjavik for New Years and was astonished, completely astonished by the amount of fireworks that could be seen.
- ctennis1 3y ago
  We have plans to visit for this coming New Years, (unless things get dramatically worse I suppose). Excited in reading your comment.
  - bmelton 3y ago
    If you can, see if you can get to a bonfire a few hours beforehand. Travel / tourism agencies can arrange this. Also, if you'd enjoy seeing the Aurora Borealis, know that due to weather, clouds, etc., it isn't very reliable, and it may be best to plan on multiple attempts at it. The experiences we had ranged from disappointing to terrifically amazing, but if we'd only gone the one time, we'd have left without having experienced it.
    - hef19898 3y ago
      Been there three times in winter, never saw an aurora brealis once... Still great trips so!

mrtksn 3y ago

What I find eerie is that they stroke out Grindavik from the signs: https://twitter.com/grindaviknews/status/1724286780914962487 https://twitter.com/grindaviknews/status/1724286780914962487 I know, they are doing it to inform people that they shouldn't go there but it gives it such a post apocalyptic vibe.

4ggr0 3y ago
Well, to be honest, for Grindavik we could currently be talking about a Pre-Apocalyptic situation :)
- Nifty3929 3y ago
  I wonder if this is a fiction genre. Can I read a book that starts with a happy town with not much going on, builds up to just before a catastrophe, and then ends? Maybe like Part 1 of Seveneves.
  - rob74 3y ago
    I read this book recently: https://www.amazon.com/Anomaly-Novel-Herv%C3%A9-Tellier/dp/1635421691/ https://www.amazon.com/Anomaly-Novel-Herv%C3%A9-Tellier/dp/1... - don't want to give away too much (that's why I'm not linking to the Wikipedia article), but it fits the genre you are proposing - except spanning the entire world, not just a town.
  - 4ggr0 3y ago
    Maybe you can find something on this list, https://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/pre-apocalyptic https://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/pre-apocalyptic I looked at a few books on this list, but not every book seems to really be about pre-apocalypse. Pre-Apocalyptic fictions sounds like literary edging :D
  - mananaysiempre 3y ago
    “The Doomsday Book” by Connie Willis kind of has that feeling for a while. I couldn’t really get into it, though; it’s undeniably a well-written book, just not the kind of book I wanted to read.

bandyaboot 3y ago

Have they evacuated the town? Edit: I see that it looks like they have but residents will be allowed in to retrieve belongings. Is there any chance that an eruption comes in the form of a large scale collapse above the magma chamber…or is that not plausible?

bbarn 3y ago
While anything's possible, the trend of recent eruptions in the Reykjanes peninsula have been more of the slow trickling small kind. They have also been relatively off the beaten path, so it's hard to compare ground shifting in the previous places since you likely wouldn't notice it after the fact like you will with pavement and buildings.
- bandyaboot 3y ago
  Got it. Here’s hoping that this will be a continuation of the trend.
rob74 3y ago
It only needs a small scale collapse if your house is standing over the sinkhole while you're inside, so evacuation is probably still the safest bet...
- bandyaboot 3y ago
  Oh yeah, I wasn’t meaning to suggest that evacuation might not be the correct course, it seems at this point not doing so would be irresponsible. Was just curious about the possibility of something very large occurring given the sinking above the chamber.
- m4rtink 3y ago
  Also some volcanic gases that might be released are quite poisonous & can be blown by wind around the place.

KeyXiote 3y ago

Any public data on this? I would love to collab on some predictive modeling for cases like this. There are some sources but couldn't find anything comprehensive enough to be accurate, need more historical context comparisons etc.

gorbachev 3y ago
Icelandic Met Office probably. https://en.vedur.is/earthquakes-and-volcanism/earthquakes https://en.vedur.is/earthquakes-and-volcanism/earthquakes I haven't explored the site enough to see if they have downloadable datasets, however.
saevarom 3y ago
Here is at least some interpretation of data with interesting graphs, like displacement graphs etc: https://en.vedur.is/about-imo/news/a-seismic-swarm-started-north-of-grindavik-last-night https://en.vedur.is/about-imo/news/a-seismic-swarm-started-n...

pcrh 3y ago

Iceland has had active volcanoes all the time it has been inhabited. Does anyone know what the "traditional" response to these sorts of ground movements was?

CaptArmchair 3y ago
Historically? The 1783 Laki eruption comes to my mind. Back then, a 25km long fissure with 130 vents opened. About 14km3 of lava and 1km3 of tephra was emitted. Lava fountains were estimated to have reached between 800m and 1400m. Some 20-25% of the population died, 50% of cattle and 50% of the horse population perished. It is argued that this eruption was the catalyst for the French Revolution, as the amount of emitted gasses caused extreme weather patterns across Europe (and the world) throughout the 1780s leading to famine, diseases and social unrest. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laki In contemporary times, there's the 1973 eruption of Eldfell on the island of Heimaey. It destroyed some 400 homes and led to a temporary evacuation of some 5.300 inhabitants. By 1975, some 80% of the population had returned. Moreover, today it's the foremost fishing center of Island with over 1/3rd of the total fish catch originating from its harbor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eldfell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eldfell
- avgcorrection 3y ago
  > By 1975, some 80% of the population had returned. Of course they had to come back to “home island”.
- pcrh 3y ago
  >The parish minister and provost of Vestur-Skaftafellssýsla, Jón Steingrímsson (1728–1791), grew famous for the eldmessa [ˈɛltˌmɛsːa] ("fire mass") that he delivered on 20 July 1783. I looked this up, and found this: "In his introduction to the translation Guðmundur E. Sigvaldson classifies Jón’s Eldritið as a “scientific classic as well is a literary jewel.” [0] It chronicles the aftermath of the eruption in some detail (i.e. people did not flee the region, for some reason....), e.g.: >The poisonous compounds leaked out of the Laki craters caused, as Jón depicts so graphically, the skin to rot off the spines of horses, swelling in their heads, jaws, and joints, rotting insides, and shrinking bones. The sheep and cattle suffered similarly. The meat from these animals was “both foul-smelling and bitter and full of poison, so that many a person died as a result of eating it” (Fires of the Earth, 76). [0] https://www.medievalist.com/articles/strongjn-versus-the-volcano-an-eighteenth-century-icelandic-priests-account-of-a-moment-of-crisisstrong https://www.medievalist.com/articles/strongjn-versus-the-vol...

1-6 3y ago

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omegant 3y ago

For anyone guessing how it could go to the town, just check the recent case of the La Palma volcano lava that runned over a town. https://youtu.be/kjg-1BemSOo?si=H_We-hOXtCHT3Wgc https://youtu.be/kjg-1BemSOo?si=H_We-hOXtCHT3Wgc The eruption in Hawai some years ago also destroyed a town and a harbor.

kseistrup 3y ago

RÚV has a liveblog with the latest news about the situation in English, Icelandic and Polish: https://www.ruv.is/english/2023-11-10-liveblog-reykjanes-peninsula-and-grindavik-396249 https://www.ruv.is/english/2023-11-10-liveblog-reykjanes-pen...

kd5bjo 3y ago
Note that the Icelandic edition [1] understandably gets more frequent and timely updates than the others. If you're ready to put up with the quirks of machine translation, there's a lot more information there to see. [1] https://www.ruv.is/frettir/innlent/2023-11-14-ryma-grindavik-vegna-nyrra-gasmaelinga-396985 https://www.ruv.is/frettir/innlent/2023-11-14-ryma-grindavik...
jahnu 3y ago
Your comment prompted me to look up how many Poles live in Iceland. Turns out they are the largest minority which is mildly surprising but shouldn’t be I guess. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poles_in_Iceland https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poles_in_Iceland
- kseistrup 3y ago
  When I started reading RÚV I wondered what the red and white flag was. My mind tried with “Greenland”, but Greenland because of the Nordic affiliation, but Greenland itself has a population of less than 60k, so how many greenlanders could there be in Iceland? When the flag turned out to be Polish I had to turn to the Woodchuck Book and was surprised, just like you. I should have mentioned it. Thanks for the link.
- thefringthing 3y ago
  I was recently in Iceland with some Polish-Canadian friends and they were amused by the number of Polish people we encountered.

______ 3y ago

That's pretty close to Blue Lagoon, one of the most popular tourist destinations in the area, which is now closed as a precaution: https://www.bluelagoon.com/seismic-activity https://www.bluelagoon.com/seismic-activity

orlp 3y ago
It's also a waste of time tourist trap. The normal Icelandic baths are much cheaper and just as good.
- baz00 3y ago
  Maybe. Avoided it. Went to Mývatn instead. Turned out that it means midge-lake. Spent 2 days eating flies. They didn't bite but weren't tasty. I've never driven the fuck out of somewhere so quickly.
  - hef19898 3y ago
    Well, Myvatn is basically on the other side of the island... Cam only recommend the non-Blue Lagoon hot baths and tubs, easily as good and a lot cheaper.
- esfandia 3y ago
  Maybe, but the surreal atmosphere when the sun rises, you are surrounded by blue everywhere, you are jetlagged from just having landed half hour ago, and you have a drink in hand is indescribable. I went to other Icelandic baths during my stay but nothing matched that experience.
- YeBanKo 3y ago
  Not just as good, but better. There are no morons around you who are constantly live streaming.

RobertVDB 3y ago

Aren't earthquakes super common in Iceland? Or am I wrong on that?

ajmurmann 3y ago
Earthquakes aren't uncommon, but what's happening in Grindavik is more than a earthquake. They were having hundreds of quakes an hour, a fissure opened and magma might come up soon. All in a little town and near a geothermal power plant which also fuels the Blue Lagoon. This also isn't super far from the main airport and the road that leads to it.
jwozn 3y ago
You aren't wrong, but the topic of interest here is the volcanic eruption. They are also relatively common compared to elsewhere in the world, but most are small and not in populated areas. See: https://www.visiticeland.com/eruption/ https://www.visiticeland.com/eruption/
bandyaboot 3y ago
They are and they tend to be small because of the type of plate boundary they’re associated with. But when they’re coming in large swarms near a volcano which is the case here, it’s a pretty strong signal of an impending eruption.
Scarblac 3y ago
During Covid a new volcano erupted quite near Grindavik, that was very tourist friendly: close to Reykjavik, not too large or dangerous, nothing it could damage nearby, a few km hiking from a road. Many web cams were setup and lots of beautiful drone footage was uploaded to YouTube as well. It erupted again 2021 and 2022. So it's a well known volcano now to the Internet public. Now it seems there will be an eruption on the same fissure again, but a) there are many more earthquakes than before, b) the detected movement of magma is far larger, and c) it could erupt anywhere on a 15km fissure line, but right now it seems to do so right in the middle of the nearby town. So it looks like this time it will be a disaster. There is also a geothermal power plant that heats the whole peninsula nearby, as well as tourist attraction the Blue Lagoon, that are both at risk.

rob74 3y ago

What's interesting to see in the pictures is that they already built a detour around the fissure: it starts in the area of fresh asphalt to the right of the guy in this photo https://cdn.mbl.is/frimg/1/45/18/1451863.jpg https://cdn.mbl.is/frimg/1/45/18/1451863.jpg, then goes through an also freshly paved-over parking lot/former green space and rejoins the road in the background (behind the construction fences).

saevarom 3y ago
I think you are misinterpreting this photo. Nobody has been paving over the fissures in the town. I think it's a combination of moisture, different coloured asphalt sections, and light/shadows that tricks the eye. As you can see in this drone footage [1] the car park asphalt is darker, and the hot water pipes ruptured in the ground create steam that spreads moisture over the asphalt, making it darker. Also, you have a building next to the car park which makes it even darker than the street. [1] https://ruv-vod-clips.akamaized.net/76a26e8d-1190-492c-9163-eba4fa4134a3.mp4 https://ruv-vod-clips.akamaized.net/76a26e8d-1190-492c-9163-...
- michaelcampbell 3y ago
  To be fair, they never said the fresh looking asphalt was a result of paving over the fissure, just that it's there.

mhandley 3y ago

In the last hour they have detected increased levels of SO2 in Grindavik, so they've evacuated residents who were being allowed in to retrieve their valuables: https://www.ruv.is/english/2023-11-10-liveblog-reykjanes-peninsula-and-grindavik-396249 https://www.ruv.is/english/2023-11-10-liveblog-reykjanes-pen... No signs of an actual eruption yet though on the cameras (the steam is a geothermal power station): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=804nPrAUAxg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=804nPrAUAxg

bell-cot 3y ago

@dang - might we change the title to "Spreading & Subsidence Damage in Grindavík"? With all the "Lava & Eruption!" hype around this situation, that would make what is actually happening now in Grindavík much clearer.

hk__2 3y ago
> With all the "Lava & Eruption!" hype around this situation, that would make what is actually happening now in Grindavík much clearer. Is it really the right place for it, though? HN is not CNN; if you want that sort of news there are probably better sources. > If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- bell-cot 3y ago
  True...but this is currently the #1 story on HN, so evidently "good hackers" find it interesting. And if the current situation is "nothing special happening", then let's not waste any good hacker's time with a pretty-ambiguous headline.

h1fra 3y ago

1m displacement is crazy, I can't imagine how much destruction it would cause inside a major city.

rwmj 3y ago

I hear in Japan the reason they have electric wires on poles and houses have individual gas cylinders is to provide resiliency during earthquakes -- the earth becomes a liquid.

arbuge 3y ago
Gases passing through dirt/sandy substances at high pressure will tend to do that. See for example: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/EImO4agHqOg https://www.youtube.com/shorts/EImO4agHqOg
- m4rtink 3y ago
  Very interesting! Now I have to think how this could be used to make something productive! :D Maybe some sort of special bearing floating on the fludized sand you can turn of and stop/stabilize by turning thr gas pipe off ?
nerdponx 3y ago
Electric wires on poles are also more likely to get damaged by wind, ice, fire, and flood, either directly or by trees falling onto them. There are tradeoffs involved.
- q1w2 3y ago
  They're also much cheaper to construct.
SoftTalker 3y ago
Getting OT but I've noticed in Scandinavian countries they use pavers a lot where in the USA we'd more likely have poured concrete or asphalt/tarmac. Sidewalks, parking surfaces, driveways, etc. Pavers would seem to me to be both more expensive to install and require higher maintenance. Is there a reason they are used so much?
- InCityDreams 3y ago
  For the uk readers: I'm guessing 'pavers' are 'flags', or 'flagstones'. Humped a few of them in my time...thank goodness for Atari, and all that followed.!!

cvccvroomvroom 3y ago

Live webcam https://youtube.com/live/Qvw5qh5K4wI https://youtube.com/live/Qvw5qh5K4wI

j-a-a-p 3y ago

Somebody observed in this thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38233905 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38233905 seeing the town shake on camera

q1w2 3y ago
Seems more likely to be the wind blowing the camera - hard to tell
- runarberg 3y ago
  Most likely wind. However this thread was from Friday and the ground was constantly shaking that day. I was there and there were rather large earthquakes like every 10-20 minutes (and smaller earthquakes every 20-30 seconds) between 16:00 and 23:00 (when I evacuated). It is highly likely that the poster in this thread was actually seeing earthquakes.

hlesesne 3y ago

Does anyone know how the large datacenters in Iceland are faring? I know that most of the big ones are north east (near the international airport in Keflavík). They were really popular for crypto miners, but have been moving into HPC very rapidly. I’d assume there is a ton of extremely expensive equipment less than 10-15 miles from where all this activity is.