Tens of thousands of earthquakes and tremors have hit the Reykjanes Peninsula causing roads to split in half and houses to buckle in the town of Grindavík on the Reykjanes Peninsula. Iceland continues to wait for the looming eruption but then there are those who believe that it will not erupt this time. Among them is Iceland‘s world re-nowned volcanologist, Haraldur Sigurdsson. In an article he points to one of the facts which is remarkable, that all the earthquakes that are now happening in Grindavík are shallow. The Earth’s crust under Reykjanes seems to be quite thin, like the oceanic crust. There are almost no earthquakes measured at depths greater than 7 to 8 km under Reykjanes.
The evacuation of the people from Grindavík coincided fifty years after the Westman Island‘s eruption where in 1973 a volcanic eruption changed the lives of the people. The eruption in Heimaey without warning lasted for five months, displaced more than three thousand people. Ash from the eruption fell for weeks, destroying homes
