My hometown of Grindavík just got evacuated. I was there throughout the day through the earthquakes. I was under the impression that we were safe, but about 2 hours ago we got the evacuation order, and we subsequently fled to a safe harbor.
We are now safe with family in the city. It’s been a long day for sure.
Reposting this here if it is of interest of anyone trying to get the feel of how it was to experience this:
The larger earthquakes (the once above 4 M) started around 16:00. There was near constant—if not plain constant—shaking from then on until the evacuation order around 23:00, as in there was always at least a minor earthquake shaking the ground every 20-30 seconds. When the activity was at the peak (around 18:00) there were larger earthquakes (close to or above 5 M) every 10-20 minutes, those were above the constant shaking from the smaller once. Note that these quakes are really shallow (5-2 km deep) and close (some had their epicenter a couple of blocks away from me, but the furthest away were still less then 3 km away). So the shakes were really sharp and sudden.
Yes, more Poles than Danes IIRC, which given Iceland's history is quite the feat. Similar to the UK, Polish workers occupy a lot of the builders/drivers/cleaners type blue collar positions in the economy.
I met a few Poles working as hotel attendants during my stay in Iceland earlier this year.
I had to call an attendant up to understand how in the word to turn the shower on (there was a long skinny faucet the water poured into the tub that had to be turned clockwise) which she said she was confused by it too and had someone show her. It was in an older Icelandic hotel that used their natural hot water (sulphur stinky but i didnt mind) from the ground for showering or any type of hot water use.
At least in the capital there are two separate systems for hot water, one with hot water pumped up from the ground, the other a heat exchanged cold water system.
Depending on where in the city you are, that is the hot water you get. The age of each building has nothing to do with it.
Ah was visiting for the first time. I stayed at the Canopy Hilton and a Room with a View (3 different rooms there). 3 out of four rooms I stayed in were new to new-ish looking; didn't use hot water from the ground. The last one at a Room with a View was very old from the old style elevator (all other rooms used more modern /present day elevator) to the older building (hallways) to the room making me assume since the newer rooms didn't use natural hot water that only older places do.
Also, fun fact, from before the Polish immigration started in earnest.
Iceland's most popular chocolate bar is Polish (Prince Polo). Poland is for cultural reasons heavily dependent on herring, abundantly fished in Icelandic waters. In 1970s, communist Poland didnt have the cash to pay for it though. Iceland accepted chocolate bars in barter.
Their popularity was helped by the fact that Iceland had import controls on chocolate bars (not sure why... To protect local industry?) so there wasn't much competition. It's a nice chocolate bar too, which helps.
Good question. By the way, Germans and French people at least do use 12hr time, but only colloquially.
When talking to someone, you’d say things like (literally translated, obviously) “let’s meet at five”, or “I saw them at around 5 in the afternoon”.
Using 24h time when speaking is common as well, but tends to emphasize formal time or preciseness. Something like “they are open until 18:30”, “the movie starts at 20:45”, or generally if there’s not enough context or a risk of getting it wrong.
So conversely 12h time can also carry a subtext or impreciseness, e.g. if I say “see you at five”, then often it’s around five, but if I say “see you at 17 o’clock”, I more likely mean 17:00 sharp.
Markers like “AM/PM” don’t exist, at all. When using 12h time, it’s either clear from context, or you add something like “in the morning”.
In written form, 12h is rather uncommon, unless speaking colloquially again (e.g. texting with friends; not with businesses or clients, as that carries too much risk of ambiguousness and sounds too informal).
Can't say about Germans, French have these habits:
> 12h time can also carry a subtext or impreciseness
There's an additional twist where 12h time is expected to be precise: when being asked for time, many a time one would answer with 12h hour + smallest delta with ±2min error margin, and only sometimes 24h, possibly rounded:
"it's 10 to 3" (3h moins 10): could be 14:48 or 14:52, 14:53 would be "5 to 3" (3h moins 5). This has a slight bias towards the highest, as usually people ask so as not to be late somewhere, so 14:52 could be answered as either "5 to 3" or even "3" depending on urgency. Someone answering "3h52" happens at time but it's fairly rare and feels a bit odd; usually happens out of some habit when reading time from analog clocks.
It's also fair to say 14:45 when it's actually 14:41, but basically nobody would say "quarter to 14".
Also, "noon" is often understood as a quasi-synonym to "lunch", and could actually mean maybe up to 2PM for some, or even 11AM if there's some preliminary social or logistics expectation: "we'll come for noon" (on vient pour midi) has a different context-dependent subtext than "we'll arrive at noon".
> you add something like “in the morning”.
"In the mornin'" ("du mat'") is indeed used as a quasi-marker, a replacement for AM but only when ambiguity needs to be resolved, which it rarely does given known context about activities or people.
Often it's used for emphasis e.g earliness: "woke up at 4" has enough context to gather that it's in the morning but has a neutral, factual tone to it, whereas "woke up at 4 in the mornin'" evokes "what? shitty night I bet, you must feel terrible"; or lateness "we were out yesterday, went to bed at 4 in the mornin'!" similarly prompts "oh looks like you had some fun!".
Sometimes it is used in jest on 24h time. An answer to the above could be "15 in the morning? are you out of your mind?", implying that person would stay up late the night before or in self-derision about one's oversleeping habits.
It's vanishingly rare to literally say "in the afternoon", generally this is inferred or explicited from conversational context, as opposed to a marker: "let's see each other tomorrow afternoon, let's say around 3?"
Iceland uses the 24-hour notation, like the rest of Scandinavia really, but it’s not too uncommon to use 12-hour notation in speak.
We tend to mix thing, like you’ll tell your spouse that you’ll be going to the whatever at “clock/time twenty” but if they ask what time it is at night you’ll say “it’s eleven”. But news media will use 24-hour notation, so it’s very likely a translation.
Honestly I’m sort of curious which countries outside the ones the British “founded” use the 12-hour notation officially.
According to Wikipedia the 12hrs day and 12 hrs night is an ancient Egyptian and Sumerian and predates anything related to British empire! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/12-hour_clock
The one that takes the most getting used to is “half four” which to me means half-past four and to an Icelander means half-to four. Which like the roundabouts can always lead to comedy misunderstandings.
Both notations are in use in different parts of Germany too. It can be quite challenging to catch these kinds of misunderstandings because even many Germans aren't aware of the possibility.
>2 HOURS AGO: The rate of ground deformation is much higher than has been measured previously on the Reykjanes Peninsula. Around 800 earthquakes have been detected since midnight. The likelihood of a volcanic eruption occurring in the near future is deemed considerable.
> Since 2021, three eruptions have taken place on the Reykjanes peninsula, in March 2021, August 2022 and July 2023. Those three were located far from any infrastructure or populated areas.
Just another Friday in Iceland!
> Also nearby is the Svartsengi geothermal plant, the main supplier of electricity and water to 30,000 residents on the Reykjanes peninsula. It has contingency plans in place to protect the plant and its workers in the event of an eruption.
Anyone have any idea what those contingency plans would be other than emergency shutdown and hope something is left to save afterwards? Or do they actually go in and put dampers and stuff on turbines to make sure they don't bounce around unnecessarily?
Preventative safety work? I can imagine there’s going to be less demand from offices and industry if a significant portion of the nearby population are making emergency plans and preparations, and even without a dip in demand from that there’s usually some oversupply with electricity generators to avoid ramp up time problems during peak demand, so possibly they decided to shut down unused capacity to reduce the risk of it being damaged? Hard to say without knowing more details…
>there’s going to be less demand from offices and industry if a significant portion of the nearby population are making emergency plans and preparations
Not the case in Iceland. Only 15% of the demand is non industrial, and people still use electricity regardless of what they're working on. Grindavik itself isn't large enough to be more than a rounding error.
>even without a dip in demand from that there’s usually some oversupply with electricity generators to avoid ramp up time problems during peak demand, so possibly they decided to shut down unused capacity to reduce the risk of it being damaged
No, geothermal plants generally aren't ramped, and they produce at maximum output unless there is maintenance. They may have reduced overall output to enable individual turbines to be turned off for brief periods while installing new remote control devices. That is speculation however as I'm not at work so I can't say for sure.
hah, cool to see this, I'm responsible for this data being available.
As much as it would suck to lose a power plant (we are already on the edge of energy shortages), it is far worse to lose hot water supply to Keflavik. They'd have to quickly build up electric heating capacity, which will make energy shortages.
This being Hacker News and all I have to wonder - was this remote control system installed in a hurry, and is it thus potentially more vulnerable to remote attack than it might otherwise be? Hope not.
No, it is not remote in the 4g sense, but in that they can control the machines remotely via the national control room. that scada network is secure and air gapped.
They likely installed the remote controls because there were already signs something was going on a week ago. If today's events happened a week ago, the whole timetable would just have been shifted a week.
> Anyone have any idea what those contingency plans would be other than emergency shutdown and hope something is left to save afterwards?
In addition to the remote-control setup that others have been talking about, they're also in the process of building defensive earthworks that will direct lava flows away from critical infrastructure.
I was in Iceland in 2014 when the Bárðarbunga volcano started to erupt. It was relatively calm and in the end, pretty safe, but during the event we were monitoring the news and waiting for a catastrophe at any moment. Lava was flowing down the landscapes. There was a considerable mental stress for me because of the uncertainty of how bad it would turn out, and it really put into perspective how we are at the mercy of nature and really can't do much except leave. What struck me was that Icelanders were so used to the threat of volcanic eruption that they didn't seem too bothered about it. "It's normal"
This is how I feel about hurricanes in the Southern US. People annually sending messages asking if I'm OK any time a hurricane comes our way... I've been in the eye of several hurricanes and I've seen wind pick up huge metal structures and crumple them into balls, chucking them into the sky until they're so high up they're no longer visible. Completely numb to them, same with tornadoes. It's easy to see how this attitude extends to volcanoes; I'd probably be most concerned with how I could get a drone out there to get some cool shots.
I wonder how much of this is due to an ability to assess the real amount of danger (thus pushing irrational fear into the back of the mind), and how much of it is desensitisation that could get you into trouble.
It's some left, some right. I just had a similar thing with a colleague - you know, they had winds exceeding a hundred kilometers an hour down there, that happens like once every few years down there! Except, like, up here in northern germany, that's fairly common during autumn.
But you kind of learn what you have to do, and what you don't want to do. Over the last weekend, we had similar winds and over the evening we heard some loud crashing, popping and overall noise. You kinda don't want to go out near trees with those winds as branches can fall - but at the same time, the wind might have blown over trees onto the roads and if some late night driver hammers into those... it'll be inconvenient for everyone, at least. We ended up meeting like 3 neighbours on the road checking out if the road is clear and had a good laugh with them.
Later on we figured out someone had launched some fireworks... dang guys.
Yeah, several weeks ago we had an unexpected flash storm, all was calm and then we had sustained 60-100mph winds for a few hours. Knocked out electricity for us and a million others for a couple days.
A ton of my neighbors had trees that had fallen on their cars or roofs. Whole trees in the road. Spent the next day helping my older neighbors pick up the damage because the city won't send anyone out to do it. As bad as it was, I can think of a dozen or more worse storms I've been in, with power outages lasting for weeks or months or flash floods submerging everyone's homes. Many of my friends were a part of the Cajun Army everyone heard about in the 2016 flood. Roofing companies make a lot of money where I'm from.
> Because numerous homeowners who were affected were without flood insurance, the federal government provided disaster aid through the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).[3] The flood was called the worst US natural disaster since Hurricane Sandy in 2012.
But this is the most sinister part. Most flood zones are correlated with impoverished people due to reasons you can guess, and insurance companies refuse to insure these homes against the only real threat in the area, thanks to lax state regulations; instead, the federal government is forced to make up the slack. The quality of recovery between the poor and well-off in these extreme weather events is vastly different.
It should be "geologically normal", Iceland is actively being created geologically.
35 million years ago, Iceland didn't exist as a landmass.
The oldest land is around 30-35 million years old, the newest land is less than a million years old, close to the center and close to Reykjanes for example (area in this story.)
I don’t know enough about vulcanology to really make any informed comments on this. It sounds like we have a decently good idea of what’s going on with moderately early warning though, which is cool. Hopefully everyone gets out ok
I know I'll sound like an egotistical asshole, but I assume that Icelanders are smart enough to deal with this with a minimum of effort and no bloodshed, and just want to know:
Is there a risk of impacting transatlantic flights over the next month?
I got stuck in the US when the big ash cloud went up from the unpronounceable volcano (2010? 2008?), I have to get there again before Christmas and I'd dearly like not to repeat the experience.
There's little chance of volcanic ash being ejected, as this isn't underneath a glacier this time. Although the pressure built up at the site is quite high.
While it may not impact transatlantic flights, if the eruption is large enough it could impact flights from & to Keflavik airport, but again there's little chance of that due to the predicted eruption site being on the east of a ridgeline, which should mean that there will be less lava flowing west.
It's valid for european postage, good for any mail from Iceland to Europe, just to send a nice reminder to the continent what Iceland can do. I received one of these and I mean, it's just perfect.
Here's a summary of background/activity, leading up to this, by GeologyHub, who has been taking about this for the past couple weeks:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsju6J1_ETw
No, no one gets used to it. Most people near the place in question and the people of Grindavík had to deal with near-constant earthquakes for hours. It caused some damage the to buildings and other things and some people started getting seasick. There's really not a lot you can do comfortably when everything is shaking nearly non-stop with intermittent, larger quakes that can cause real damage. You're constantly on edge.
I was in Grindavík yesterday and stayed until the evacuation order. No you don’t get used to it. You may think you do, but your brain doesn’t.
The larger earthquakes (the once above 4 M) started around 16:00. There was near constant—if not plain constant—shaking from then on until the evacuation order around 23:00, as in there was always at least a minor earthquake shaking the ground every 20-30 seconds. When the activity was at the peak (around 18:00) there were larger earthquakes (close to or above 5 M) every 10-20 minutes, those were above the constant shaking from the smaller once. Note that these quakes are really shallow (5-2 km deep) and close (some had their epicenter a couple of blocks away from me, but the furthest away were still less then 3 km away). So the shakes were really sharp and sudden.
As the quakes went on, I noticed I started getting more jumpy whenever there was a bigger earthquake, some people reported feeling seasick from the constant quakes, but I personally didn’t. Today I have a headache and am just spending the day in bed at my safe harbor, I suspect the stress got the better of me.
The explosiveness has more to do with the composition of the magma. Magma high in silica is thicker and doesn’t offgas as readily which leads to more gas explosions with pent up pressure. Magma lower in silica explodes much less because the gas bubbles out instead of building up.
Not quite the same thing. We've already been prepping for this.
3 days ago, we got completely remote control of the Grindavik geothermal facility. There's also a backup system installed by Orkan (petrol company).
Roads are also shut down to Grindavik to prevent tourists from being dumb.
The Blue Lagoon did terrible, and only yesterday shut down, 3 days after the police chief said it was grossly irresponsible. Money grabbers love grabbing.
Air traffic will only really shut down if there's a great deal of gasses or smoke. Magma is magma, and isn't a big deal as long as people or animals aren't in the way.
I don’t know exactly how it works in Iceland but most state of emergency gives the executive branch unrestricted power for certain things, aka bypass Congress/parliament. It gives quicker response time, and allows the executive branch to do stuff like closing roads, moving finances, or deploying the military beyond most laws.
People can be in a higher state of preparedness, such as packing food and water in a vehicle and be ready to get outta Dodge. And I'm just guessing but in some places that means local governments can call more emergency responders to active duty but no idea if that applies here.
Pretty much it. We're at a "get people and services ready for a potential disaster" stage. And it's sort of mislabeled by the Guardian. We have three stages for events like this; "uncertainty", "alert" and "emergency". The state that's been declared is "alert" not "emergency".
Although sitting here and feeling my house rock back and forth, with the earthquake map looking like seen in the link below, I don't think it's too long until state of emergency.
We are now safe with family in the city. It’s been a long day for sure.