Volcano Erupts in Iceland for Third Time Since December

A volcano system in southwestern Iceland erupted on Thursday, for the third time since December, with fountains of bright orange lava visible from Iceland’s capital, Reykjavik, about 30 miles away.

The eruption occurred at 6 a.m. on a mountain ridge on the Reykjanes Peninsula, according to the country’s Meteorological Office. A significant share of Iceland’s population of about 375,000 lives in the area, although they did not appear to be at risk.

Video taken from a Coast Guard helicopter showed a fissure estimated to be nearly two miles wide. And later in the morning, a stream of lava flowed over the main road that connects Grindavik, a nearby fishing town, to Reykjavik.

Volcanic eruptions are not uncommon in Iceland, but the volcanoes on the Reykjanes Peninsula had been dormant for about 800 years until 2021. There have been several eruptions since, and experts say that the threat to the peninsula, where about 31,000 residents live in several towns, will not end soon.

“It’s like a tap of water that is now open underneath the ground,” said Kristin Maria Birgisdottir, a spokeswoman for Grindavik’s mayor, adding that unless it was “turned off soon,” the peninsula would be seeing “continuous events.”

Grindavik, a town of 3,800 that is the closest population center to the volcano, was evacuated before the volcano last erupted in January and destroyed part of the town. It remains empty, its residents displaced across the country and prevented from returning to their homes by the threat of eruptions and by cracks that the seismic activity has opened inside their town.

Ms. Birgisdottir said that Thursday’s eruption had occurred north of Grindavik and did not affect it directly, but the lava covering the road meant that anyone wanting to get to the town would need to take a longer road.

Ms. Birgisdottir, who was born and raised in Grindavik, said that she had bought a house there a few months ago but was now unable to reach it. Residents have been allowed back in groups to check on their properties and retrieve belongings, and she had been given a slot for Thursday morning, Ms. Birgisdottir said. Then the eruption happened.

“We are always waiting to be woken up from this nightmare,” she said, adding that life in the past few months had felt like watching a bad movie.

Iceland’s civil defense agency said that the Blue Lagoon, a geothermal spa that is a popular tourist destination, had been evacuated on Thursday morning.

About 40 guests at the Northern Light Inn, a hotel situated about a mile away, were also evacuated on Thursday after the authorities informed the owner of the imminent eruption. Fridrik Einarsson, who has been operating the hotel for three decades with his sister, said that it was the second evacuation within the last month and that they planned to reopen once the eruption was over.

Unndor Sigurdsson, a schoolteacher and a father of three whose house in Grindavik was destroyed by a previous eruption, said that he had seen the latest eruption while driving on the Reykjanes highway to go to work on Thursday morning.

But he said that after seeing lava consume his house last month, there was not much else to feel.

“I feel numb at this point,” he said.