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.
