#live feeds

January 14th update.

Early this morning a crack opened up in the earth and lava started to spill out. This wasn't entirely unexpected but it's placement is the worst case scenario for a lot of people.

You, like the people who live in Grindavík, can watch the slow flow of molten earth towards the town live, on webcams that cover the area from a few angles, on either of these two links. Remember, these are people's homes, so, while bearing witness to nature's wrath is something we may want to do, know you're doing it along side the very people whose homes those are. Don't be a ghoul. Link 1 - Icelandic national broadcast

Link 2 - Morgunblaðið

Now let me go back a couple of days and cover some preamble.

A group of people have been working hard, building a low protective wall (think sandbagging but for lava, not water) and trying to fill in the massive crack in the earth in the Icelandic town of Grindavík when one of them went missing. His tools were spotted down the crack, but after a few days of searching, the authorities gave up on finding him. He's presumed dead, swallowed whole by the earth. This is the first death associated with the situation.

When the crack opened this morning it opened across the protective barrier they had been working on. Some effort was made to try and get the expensive machinery out, making several people watching on live feeds very very nervous, as the lava started running on both sides of this little barrier. A clear black split in the bright red heat of molten rock in the dark winter morning. No machines and no (more) workers were lost, but fear rose quickly. If the lava split the barrier then what of the town?

Before the question could even be asked "officially" enough to start formulating a swift answer, a second smaller tear in the earth opened on the town's side of the wall, far closer to the nearest street, the nearest home, than the previous larger crack.

People who had been struck with fear and a panicked hope that Something could be done to protect their homes watched as that hope was swiftly set ablaze.

The search for the missing man stopped just the day before yesterday, so this has been very quick, and while the previous situation was marked with repeated and intense earthquakes and a tiny spillage of lava that lasted less than a day, this was almost gentle. People didn't get a buildup of warning as pressure rose and the ground readied itself to spill forth it's contents, not the way they did before. It seems the pressure release of December just wasn't enough for a notable difference. The town of Grindavík stands empty right now. No one is in there, waiting for the slow flowing doom. But these are still people's homes. Everyone's been evacuated, but almost everyone had been hoping, and had begun waiting, to go HOME. They are watching this now. Wondering if their home will even exist tomorrow.

This is expected to be the worst volcanic event in Iceland since the eruption in Heimaey where a large portion of the settlement was entirely lost.

We rebuilt then and odds are we'll rebuild now, but everyone who's ever lost anything close to this degree knows that no matter how well you rebuild, no matter what well you replace what you've lost, what's lost is still Lost.

So, be kind, don't be a ghoul, and maybe take the moment to respect the fierce power of the earth we all have such tendency to take for granted, and be reminded of how even in places of peace, human life both physical and metaphorical, is so very, very, very fragile, that we should be treating it gently and not as disposable.