Seeing red Volcanic eruption burns fiercely as barriers protect Icelandic fishing town

Defensive barriers that were bolstered overnight on Saturday around the fishing town of Grindavik appeared to have held, but a steadily slowing lava flow from the fourth volcanic eruption on Iceland's Reykjanes peninsula since December remained a threat yesterday.

- Jon Henley

After weeks of warnings that semi-molten rock was building up under the ground, the Icelandic Meteorological Office (IMO) said on Saturday that the eruption, at 8.23pm local time, had opened a nearly two-mile fissure in the earth between two mountains.

Lava was flowing mainly south and south-east at a rate of about 1,000 metres an hour overnight and could reach the ocean, the IMO said. Defensive dykes and barriers were being reinforced to stop a "significantly wider" lava bed wrecking the main coastal road.

By midday yesterday, scientists said flows appeared to be slowing but still posed a danger to infrastructure in and around Grindavik. "Seismic activity has decreased since the eruption began," the IMO's Pálmi Erlendsson told the broadcaster RÚV.

Halldór Geirsson, an associate professor at the Institute of Earth Sciences at the University of Iceland, told Reuters the eruption was "quite energetic, and there was a lot of material coming out - more than in the previous eruption".