This is the best summary I could come up with:
Iceland’s prime minister has sought to reassure the nation as it braces for a volcanic eruption and the Reykjanes peninsula continues to be hit by hundreds of earthquakes.
Lying between the Eurasian and North American tectonic plates – which move in opposite directions – Iceland is a global hotspot for seismic and volcanic activity.
Although the size and intensity of the activity was decreasing, the met office said the volcanic hazard assessment remained unchanged, with the country in a state of emergency.
Huge queues, several kilometres long, formed as residents of the fishing town were briefly allowed to return to their homes to collect necessities and belongings.
In a speech in the Icelandic parliament, Katrín Jakobsdóttir said Friday’s evacuation of the town was done “with the safety of the residents in mind” but shared her sympathy with those forced to leave their homes.
They added: “The natural hazards monitoring team at IMO is operating at maximum surveillance while the department of civil protection and emergency management coordinates short-term, temporary access to Grindavík today, 13 November.”
The original article contains 479 words, the summary contains 175 words. Saved 63%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Ragnarök awaits.
How bad would an eruption be on a local, country and global scale? With the amount of news surrounding this, it makes it sound like a super volcano is about to erupt. At the same time however, I’d think a super volcano would be way more disasterous than a basic evacuation would handle.
A similar series of eruptions happened in 2010. It’s bad, but not apocalyptic. Planes were diverted because of ash clouds for a bit, and IIRC a few people who didn’t heed the ample warnings died.
This should be like that.
e: hopefully nobody will be belligerent enough to ignore the warnings.
e2: from that article: ‘No human fatalities were reported from the 2010 eruption of Eyjafjallajökull’, thank goodness. I must have mixed it up with a different eruption. It seems like Iceland no longer fucks about with Mother Earth. I did read all nearby towns have been evacuated already.
So yeah, expect a light show and some short-term air travel disruptions in the northern hemisphere as the wind blows.
