A Lot of Damage in Grindavík

https://icelandmonitor.mbl.is/news/news/2023/11/13/a_lot_of_damage_in_grindavik/

by perihelions • 3 years ago

308 152 3 years ago

icelandmonitor.mbl.is

pierat• 3 years ago

They've also mostly rescued all animals as well from the area, including animals in homes, along with sheep and horses in pastures.

When the volcano blows, it should only be property, building, and road damage.

repelsteeltje• 3 years ago

When the volcano blows, it should only be property, building, and road damage.

Mind you, those roads in Iceland might be expensive, with luxurious built-in heating. ;-)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowmelt_system

bbarn2• 3 years ago

I can tell you for sure there are no such heated roads in Grindavík. The one in Reykjavík is on a street that cars can drive down, but in practice don't very often. Large plows would struggle there and the pushed off snow would clog the walking areas in a very popular tourism location.

icepat2• 3 years ago

There's a non-zero risk of it going off in the ocean, which could cause ash fallout, depending on the magnitude of the blast.

Property and infrastructure damage is not the only outcome here. We could end up with ash fallout and flight disruptions. There's also a major power station in the immediate risk zone, which is a major loss if it gets destroyed.

If and when this blows up, it's going to be big. The question is just if it's big and causes fallout, or just big. And when we're talking about property damage, it's less damage and more "will the town be obliterated or not". The magma is most shallow under the town, and there's a 15 kilometer magma pipe extending to the ocean. So the possibility of the eruption happening in Grindavik itself is also very real.

4ggr03• 3 years ago

2010 showed what kinds of impacts can occur when a volcano erupts in Iceland. [1]

In response to concerns that volcanic ash ejected during the 2010 eruptions of Eyjafjallajökull in Iceland would damage aircraft engines, the controlled airspace of many European countries was closed to instrument flight rules traffic, resulting in what at the time was the largest air-traffic shut-down since World War II.
On 16 April 2010, 16,000 of Europe's usual 28,000 daily scheduled passenger flights were cancelled and on the following day 16,000 of the usual 22,000 flights were cancelled. By 21 April 95,000 flights had been cancelled.
IATA stated that the total loss for the airline industry was around US$1.7 billion (£1.1 billion, €1.3 billion).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_travel_disruption_after_th...

avar• 3 years ago

When the volcano blows, it should only be property, building, and road damage.

People had the option to get their animals, but not everyone did so. If the eruption destroys the town some animals will be among the casualties, if they haven't starved etc. already.

DavidPeiffer• 3 years ago

I have found geology professor Shawn Willsey's YouTube channel to have high value, no drama interpretations of the situation in Grindavik. He has been posting 1-2 videos per day for the past few days as new information arises.

https://youtu.be/xvlZOpZE2KE?si=c2_Ew7LDKHrEpoN9

coryfklein• 3 years ago

This is a much better introduction to what has happened this week; the original article gives absolutely no context about the related volcanic activity.

TLDR; Grindavík is located in Iceland, a country known for its volcanic activity. Earthquakes and land deformation have exploded in frequency in the area under and around the small town of 4,000 people and geologists expect a volcanic eruption is imminent. The town has been evacuated.

ptero• 3 years ago

To add a note that while 4000 people is a small town almost anywhere, it is over 1% of Iceland's population. So the impact on the country is non negligible. My 2c.

latchkey• 3 years ago

He starts off with saying that "there is a line of magma that is 15km long and 9 miles in length."

Do you know why he would mix metrics like that?

Edit: he's talking about a rectangle and his wording, to me, implied that he was using X/Y coordinates to talk about how big the rectangle is. Except that it sounded like he was mixing metrics. Other commenters suggest that he's just trying to help us dumb Americans. That could make sense too, but wasn't obvious in his wording to me. 15km ~= 9 miles, I should have done that math. =)

earthnail• 3 years ago

Isn’t he just trying to explain it for a wide audience? He‘s just translating units here.

fhars• 3 years ago

For the benefit of the American viewers, who might not immediately know what 15km are.

bitcharmer• 3 years ago

15km long and 9 miles in length

This is not mixing. He's just presenting the length in two different measurement systems.

jrace• 3 years ago

That does read weird

"15km long, or 9miles"

Would be much better

The mixing of 'length' and 'long' was odd.

anonu• 3 years ago

If he had said 15km long and 9 miles wide my head would've exploded

schiffern• 3 years ago

  > He starts off with saying that "there is a line of magma that is 15km long and 9 miles in length."

The real explanation is rather prosaic: bad transcription. He doesn't use the word "and."

An accurate transcription would be:

  > there is a line of magma that is 15 km long—about 9 miles in length.

He's just (parenthetically) converting the units.

sbuttgereit• 3 years ago

I actually watch Shawn Willsey's content for everything but this topic. I find his Grindavik coverage isn't that great. It's overlong, over-speculative, and sometimes missed more current or extended information available elsewhere. Some of this I think is due to his being a relatively newer YouTuber (in terms of gaining traction) and his personal interest in Iceland: to be clear, its not that he's disingenuous or unqualified... its more that he's not yet crafted a public presentation style which fits the medium better. However his roadcut geology series is interesting even if you're only getting his on the spot opinions of what he's observing.

By far, the best source about what's going on in Grindavik I've found is just the Icelandic Meteorological Office website: https://en.vedur.is/ (English version, which is quite good). That in combination with some residents of Iceland that post shorter updates the keeps close to the reported local news seems to be the best.

Scarblac3• 3 years ago

Looking for Grindavik news on X etc right now, there is already an annoying amount of video and images of erupting volcanoes, from previous years, or from somewhere else completely. Even though there is no eruption at all yet. Annoying.

cryptoegorophy• 3 years ago

Community notes need to speed up

haunter• 3 years ago

Am I using a different Twitter? I only see local videos no "annoying amount of video and images of erupting volcanoes, from previous years, or from somewhere else completely"

seizethegdgap• 3 years ago

I was seeing a lot of what Scarblac said they were seeing, but looking right now at

https://twitter.com/search?q=grindavik&f=live

and it's pretty clean. You'll occasionally see the famous drone video from the 2021 eruption being touted as what's happening in Gridavik right now.

Scarblac3• 3 years ago

Yesterday it was way worse. Then the cracks in the middle of town opened and it seems that's sensational enough to use instead.

hef198985• 3 years ago

Not just Twitter, I saw a "symbol" picture of a volcanic eruption on a major German news site about Grindavik...

rjmunro• 3 years ago

This is why you can't use X (or facebook or any other social media) for news.

styren• 3 years ago

All depends on the accounts that you follow but I agree that the search function of X is horrible.

LesZedCB• 3 years ago

makes you wonder about this very thread then

gosub100• 3 years ago

Reminds me of nearly every time there is an aircraft incident with, say a 737 but the media show a stock photo of a completely different plane that has 4 engines.

namuol• 3 years ago

You may want to consider waiting a few more minutes to get news from reliable sources.

tempaccount1234• 3 years ago

You can watch the live cams on RÚV.is or the tv channel ruv2 that streams from there. That way you also get RÚV radio sound, with their great music choices that now clash with the night images…

sebazzz• 3 years ago

Instead of becoming a more reliable source of news, thanks to ad payouts and the resulting engagement farming by blue checkmarks Twitter/X is becoming increasingly less reliable.

mock-possum• 3 years ago

Since the effect is so obvious, it’s hard to imagine that hasn’t been the objective.

WXLCKNO2• 3 years ago

Iceland is the only place I've been to twice in two years when traveling.

I usually go a new place everytime but I simply couldn't get enough of it just once and had to go again ASAP.

Hopefully this situation turns out better than the worse predictions.

bmelton2• 3 years ago

Same. Wife and I went for New Years this year and it was by far one of the most satisfying vacations I've ever taken. Absolutely nothing about the place is overrated, and we lament how little of it we've experienced.

It is as close to magic as anywhere I've been, and their New Year celebration is insanity.

cdelsolar• 3 years ago

I went up to the hill in the center of Reykjavik for New Years and was astonished, completely astonished by the amount of fireworks that could be seen.

ctennis1• 3 years ago

We have plans to visit for this coming New Years, (unless things get dramatically worse I suppose). Excited in reading your comment.

baz003• 3 years ago

The hotdogs are very overrated! Hospital in Selfoss is amazing though, especially after eating one :)

xenospn• 3 years ago

Honestly. It’s a beautiful country full of wonderful people and I can’t wait to go back again. Wish them nothing but the best!

alistairSH• 3 years ago

We visited in January 2017 and I'd love to go back when there's more than 5 hours of daylight. The trip was spectacular. And it's an easy flight from DC and 5 nights was plenty to hit most of the easy tourist spots.

hef198985• 3 years ago

Winter is the ideal time to go northern lights hunting. Either way, I've been propably too often, 5 times by now, twice in summer including one highland crossing, and three times in winter. My recomondation would be, if budget and vacation time allows, to visit Iceland once in summer and once in winter.

mrtksn2• 3 years ago

What I find eerie is that they stroke out Grindavik from the signs: https://twitter.com/grindaviknews/status/1724286780914962487

I know, they are doing it to inform people that they shouldn't go there but it gives it such a post apocalyptic vibe.

4ggr03• 3 years ago

Well, to be honest, for Grindavik we could currently be talking about a Pre-Apocalyptic situation :)

Nifty3929• 3 years ago

I wonder if this is a fiction genre. Can I read a book that starts with a happy town with not much going on, builds up to just before a catastrophe, and then ends? Maybe like Part 1 of Seveneves.

tangus• 3 years ago

It's the standard practice when the road is closed. It doesn't give apocalyptical vibes to me, but maybe roads break too often where I live :)

_ph_• 3 years ago

It is the usual way of denoting that there is no turn right which leads to the designated location. Usually because of some road closure. Of course here it has a strange vibe to it.

rob745• 3 years ago

Yeah, standard procedure (here in Germany too), except usually it's the road that's closed, and not the entire town...

strken• 3 years ago

Not that it's quite the same, but I wonder how common it is to have a place struck off of official maps and signs for safety purposes? I know of one, Wittenoom[0] in Australia, which was removed due to being heavily contaminated with asbestos, but I wonder what other examples are out there.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wittenoom,_Western_Australia

Rebelgecko• 3 years ago

There was a lake that was removed from the maps of a state park near me, although that was to prevent it from being over-visited

lisper3• 3 years ago

Just FYI, the past tense of "strike" is "struck", not "stroke". It could be argued that it should be "stroke" to parallel words like "break-broke" and "wake-woke" but it's not. English is weird. (And the past tense of "hike" is "hiked", not "huck" nor "hoke", which aren't words at all [UPDATE - turns out they are, see child comment from u/GrinningFool], but they probably should be.)

Tempest1981• 3 years ago

Or they meant this def'n of stroke:

a mark made by drawing a pen, pencil, or paintbrush in one direction across paper or canvas.

GrinningFool2• 3 years ago

huck - to throw or toss; to launch oneself in the air

hoke - to give a contrived, falsely impressive, or hokey quality to

ska2• 3 years ago

Even more confusingly, if it is past participle usage, it's "stricken"

e.g. "Strike it off", "I struck it off", "It was stricken off"

same with drive/drove/driven

One of those fun things for ESL folks I am sure.

manojlds• 3 years ago

Apocalyptic vibe would be signs overrun with weeds and such and cars stranded on highways

bandyaboot4• 3 years ago

Have they evacuated the town?

Edit: I see that it looks like they have but residents will be allowed in to retrieve belongings. Is there any chance that an eruption comes in the form of a large scale collapse above the magma chamber…or is that not plausible?

bbarn2• 3 years ago

While anything's possible, the trend of recent eruptions in the Reykjanes peninsula have been more of the slow trickling small kind. They have also been relatively off the beaten path, so it's hard to compare ground shifting in the previous places since you likely wouldn't notice it after the fact like you will with pavement and buildings.

bandyaboot4• 3 years ago

Got it. Here’s hoping that this will be a continuation of the trend.

rob745• 3 years ago

It only needs a small scale collapse if your house is standing over the sinkhole while you're inside, so evacuation is probably still the safest bet...

bandyaboot4• 3 years ago

Oh yeah, I wasn’t meaning to suggest that evacuation might not be the correct course, it seems at this point not doing so would be irresponsible. Was just curious about the possibility of something very large occurring given the sinking above the chamber.

m4rtink3• 3 years ago

Also some volcanic gases that might be released are quite poisonous & can be blown by wind around the place.

KeyXiote• 3 years ago

Any public data on this? I would love to collab on some predictive modeling for cases like this. There are some sources but couldn't find anything comprehensive enough to be accurate, need more historical context comparisons etc.

gorbachev• 3 years ago

Icelandic Met Office probably.

https://en.vedur.is/earthquakes-and-volcanism/earthquakes

I haven't explored the site enough to see if they have downloadable datasets, however.

saevarom2• 3 years ago

Here is at least some interpretation of data with interesting graphs, like displacement graphs etc: https://en.vedur.is/about-imo/news/a-seismic-swarm-started-n...

pcrh3• 3 years ago

Iceland has had active volcanoes all the time it has been inhabited.

Does anyone know what the "traditional" response to these sorts of ground movements was?

CaptArmchair• 3 years ago

Historically?

The 1783 Laki eruption comes to my mind. Back then, a 25km long fissure with 130 vents opened. About 14km3 of lava and 1km3 of tephra was emitted. Lava fountains were estimated to have reached between 800m and 1400m.

Some 20-25% of the population died, 50% of cattle and 50% of the horse population perished.

It is argued that this eruption was the catalyst for the French Revolution, as the amount of emitted gasses caused extreme weather patterns across Europe (and the world) throughout the 1780s leading to famine, diseases and social unrest.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laki

In contemporary times, there's the 1973 eruption of Eldfell on the island of Heimaey. It destroyed some 400 homes and led to a temporary evacuation of some 5.300 inhabitants. By 1975, some 80% of the population had returned. Moreover, today it's the foremost fishing center of Island with over 1/3rd of the total fish catch originating from its harbor.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eldfell

avgcorrection• 3 years ago

By 1975, some 80% of the population had returned.

Of course they had to come back to “home island”.

pcrh3• 3 years ago

The parish minister and provost of Vestur-Skaftafellssýsla, Jón Steingrímsson (1728–1791), grew famous for the eldmessa [ˈɛltˌmɛsːa] ("fire mass") that he delivered on 20 July 1783.

I looked this up, and found this: "In his introduction to the translation Guðmundur E. Sigvaldson classifies Jón’s Eldritið as a “scientific classic as well is a literary jewel.” [0]

It chronicles the aftermath of the eruption in some detail (i.e. people did not flee the region, for some reason....), e.g.:

The poisonous compounds leaked out of the Laki craters caused, as Jón depicts so graphically, the skin to rot off the spines of horses, swelling in their heads, jaws, and joints, rotting insides, and shrinking bones. The sheep and cattle suffered similarly. The meat from these animals was “both foul-smelling and bitter and full of poison, so that many a person died as a result of eating it” (Fires of the Earth, 76).

[0] https://www.medievalist.com/articles/strongjn-versus-the-vol...

hutzlibu2• 3 years ago

"Does anyone know what the "traditional" response to these sorts of ground movements was?"

The very old tradition was to increase the amounts of sacrifices to the gods, because clearly they were angry.

pcrh3• 3 years ago

Is there documentation for this? Icelanders are Christian (since when, I'm not sure), and would more likely pray. Also I don't think there is a history of human sacrifice in Norway/Denmark/Scandinavia.

troyvit• 3 years ago

This article talks about the Eldfell eruption in 1973. It's one of the few cases where people were able to divert a lava flow.

https://www.usgs.gov/observatories/hvo/news/volcano-watch-wh...

m4rtink3• 3 years ago

IIRC, they also used the remaining solid lava flow for district heating for a while so that it cooled down faster and could be trucked out of the way where necessary.

omegant• 3 years ago

For anyone guessing how it could go to the town, just check the recent case of the La Palma volcano lava that runned over a town.

https://youtu.be/kjg-1BemSOo?si=H_We-hOXtCHT3Wgc

The eruption in Hawai some years ago also destroyed a town and a harbor.

kseistrup2• 3 years ago

RÚV has a liveblog with the latest news about the situation in English, Icelandic and Polish: https://www.ruv.is/english/2023-11-10-liveblog-reykjanes-pen...

kd5bjo• 3 years ago

Note that the Icelandic edition [1] understandably gets more frequent and timely updates than the others. If you're ready to put up with the quirks of machine translation, there's a lot more information there to see.

[1] https://www.ruv.is/frettir/innlent/2023-11-14-ryma-grindavik...

jahnu• 3 years ago

Your comment prompted me to look up how many Poles live in Iceland. Turns out they are the largest minority which is mildly surprising but shouldn’t be I guess.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poles_in_Iceland

kseistrup2• 3 years ago

When I started reading RÚV I wondered what the red and white flag was. My mind tried with “Greenland”, but Greenland because of the Nordic affiliation, but Greenland itself has a population of less than 60k, so how many greenlanders could there be in Iceland?

When the flag turned out to be Polish I had to turn to the Woodchuck Book and was surprised, just like you. I should have mentioned it. Thanks for the link.

thefringthing2• 3 years ago

I was recently in Iceland with some Polish-Canadian friends and they were amused by the number of Polish people we encountered.

______• 3 years ago

That's pretty close to Blue Lagoon, one of the most popular tourist destinations in the area, which is now closed as a precaution: https://www.bluelagoon.com/seismic-activity

orlp• 3 years ago

It's also a waste of time tourist trap. The normal Icelandic baths are much cheaper and just as good.

baz003• 3 years ago

Maybe. Avoided it. Went to Mývatn instead. Turned out that it means midge-lake. Spent 2 days eating flies. They didn't bite but weren't tasty. I've never driven the fuck out of somewhere so quickly.

esfandia• 3 years ago

Maybe, but the surreal atmosphere when the sun rises, you are surrounded by blue everywhere, you are jetlagged from just having landed half hour ago, and you have a drink in hand is indescribable. I went to other Icelandic baths during my stay but nothing matched that experience.

YeBanKo• 3 years ago

Not just as good, but better. There are no morons around you who are constantly live streaming.

RobertVDB• 3 years ago

Aren't earthquakes super common in Iceland? Or am I wrong on that?

ajmurmann• 3 years ago

Earthquakes aren't uncommon, but what's happening in Grindavik is more than a earthquake. They were having hundreds of quakes an hour, a fissure opened and magma might come up soon. All in a little town and near a geothermal power plant which also fuels the Blue Lagoon. This also isn't super far from the main airport and the road that leads to it.

jwozn• 3 years ago

You aren't wrong, but the topic of interest here is the volcanic eruption. They are also relatively common compared to elsewhere in the world, but most are small and not in populated areas. See: https://www.visiticeland.com/eruption/

bandyaboot4• 3 years ago

They are and they tend to be small because of the type of plate boundary they’re associated with. But when they’re coming in large swarms near a volcano which is the case here, it’s a pretty strong signal of an impending eruption.

Scarblac3• 3 years ago

During Covid a new volcano erupted quite near Grindavik, that was very tourist friendly: close to Reykjavik, not too large or dangerous, nothing it could damage nearby, a few km hiking from a road. Many web cams were setup and lots of beautiful drone footage was uploaded to YouTube as well. It erupted again 2021 and 2022. So it's a well known volcano now to the Internet public.

Now it seems there will be an eruption on the same fissure again, but a) there are many more earthquakes than before, b) the detected movement of magma is far larger, and c) it could erupt anywhere on a 15km fissure line, but right now it seems to do so right in the middle of the nearby town. So it looks like this time it will be a disaster.

There is also a geothermal power plant that heats the whole peninsula nearby, as well as tourist attraction the Blue Lagoon, that are both at risk.

micromacrofoot• 3 years ago

yes, and earthquakes are also super common precursors to volcanic eruptions

rob745• 3 years ago

What's interesting to see in the pictures is that they already built a detour around the fissure: it starts in the area of fresh asphalt to the right of the guy in this photo https://cdn.mbl.is/frimg/1/45/18/1451863.jpg, then goes through an also freshly paved-over parking lot/former green space and rejoins the road in the background (behind the construction fences).

saevarom2• 3 years ago

I think you are misinterpreting this photo. Nobody has been paving over the fissures in the town. I think it's a combination of moisture, different coloured asphalt sections, and light/shadows that tricks the eye. As you can see in this drone footage [1] the car park asphalt is darker, and the hot water pipes ruptured in the ground create steam that spreads moisture over the asphalt, making it darker. Also, you have a building next to the car park which makes it even darker than the street.

[1] https://ruv-vod-clips.akamaized.net/76a26e8d-1190-492c-9163-...

michaelcampbell• 3 years ago

To be fair, they never said the fresh looking asphalt was a result of paving over the fissure, just that it's there.

mhandley• 3 years ago

In the last hour they have detected increased levels of SO2 in Grindavik, so they've evacuated residents who were being allowed in to retrieve their valuables:

https://www.ruv.is/english/2023-11-10-liveblog-reykjanes-pen...

No signs of an actual eruption yet though on the cameras (the steam is a geothermal power station): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=804nPrAUAxg

bell-cot2• 3 years ago

@dang - might we change the title to "Spreading & Subsidence Damage in Grindavík"?

With all the "Lava & Eruption!" hype around this situation, that would make what is actually happening now in Grindavík much clearer.

hk__2• 3 years ago

With all the "Lava & Eruption!" hype around this situation, that would make what is actually happening now in Grindavík much clearer.

Is it really the right place for it, though? HN is not CNN; if you want that sort of news there are probably better sources.

If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

bell-cot2• 3 years ago

True...but this is currently the #1 story on HN, so evidently "good hackers" find it interesting.

And if the current situation is "nothing special happening", then let's not waste any good hacker's time with a pretty-ambiguous headline.

h1fra• 3 years ago

1m displacement is crazy, I can't imagine how much destruction it would cause inside a major city.

rwmj• 3 years ago

I hear in Japan the reason they have electric wires on poles and houses have individual gas cylinders is to provide resiliency during earthquakes -- the earth becomes a liquid.

arbuge• 3 years ago

Gases passing through dirt/sandy substances at high pressure will tend to do that.

See for example: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/EImO4agHqOg

m4rtink3• 3 years ago

Very interesting! Now I have to think how this could be used to make something productive! :D Maybe some sort of special bearing floating on the fludized sand you can turn of and stop/stabilize by turning thr gas pipe off ?

nerdponx• 3 years ago

Electric wires on poles are also more likely to get damaged by wind, ice, fire, and flood, either directly or by trees falling onto them. There are tradeoffs involved.

q1w22• 3 years ago

They're also much cheaper to construct.

SoftTalker• 3 years ago

Getting OT but I've noticed in Scandinavian countries they use pavers a lot where in the USA we'd more likely have poured concrete or asphalt/tarmac. Sidewalks, parking surfaces, driveways, etc.

Pavers would seem to me to be both more expensive to install and require higher maintenance. Is there a reason they are used so much?

InCityDreams• 3 years ago

For the uk readers: I'm guessing 'pavers' are 'flags', or 'flagstones'.

Humped a few of them in my time...thank goodness for Atari, and all that followed.!!

yread• 3 years ago

There are machines that are super fast at laying them. And digging them up and replacing them is a lot less disruptive than asphalt. Plus it makes cars drive a bit slower. And they drain naturally

runeofdoom• 3 years ago

Purely a guess on my part: concrete or asphalt will be destroyed by frost heave[1] and be difficult to patch well, while pavers will endure it better and are easier to restore.

1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frost_heaving

danaris• 3 years ago

We have electric wires on poles in the northeast US, too—largely because the ground freezes solid for several months of the year.

It's not that unusual a precaution.

(Though yes, as a sibling commenter notes, we do have to deal with them getting taken down by wind, lightning, and the occasional hapless driver from time to time. There's no perfect solution.)

HeyLaughingBoy2• 3 years ago

My guess is that it's more likely due to the cost of digging/right of way, etc. It gets significantly cold here in MN and most powerlines are underground, but we have a lot of open space.

A statistic I remember from when I lived there is that Connecticut has more trees per mile of powerline than any other state. Every time there was an ice storm, thousands of people lost power.

kalleboo• 3 years ago

In Sweden power lines are buried, even in the very north of the country. I guess it's a cost thing.

cvccvroomvroom• 3 years ago

Live webcam https://youtube.com/live/Qvw5qh5K4wI

j-a-a-p• 3 years ago

Somebody observed in this thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38233905 seeing the town shake on camera

q1w22• 3 years ago

Seems more likely to be the wind blowing the camera - hard to tell

runarberg• 3 years ago

Most likely wind. However this thread was from Friday and the ground was constantly shaking that day. I was there and there were rather large earthquakes like every 10-20 minutes (and smaller earthquakes every 20-30 seconds) between 16:00 and 23:00 (when I evacuated). It is highly likely that the poster in this thread was actually seeing earthquakes.

hlesesne• 3 years ago

Does anyone know how the large datacenters in Iceland are faring?

I know that most of the big ones are north east (near the international airport in Keflavík).

They were really popular for crypto miners, but have been moving into HPC very rapidly. I’d assume there is a ton of extremely expensive equipment less than 10-15 miles from where all this activity is.

A Lot of Damage in Grindavík

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