RAUFARFELL, Iceland (Reuters) – Icelanders living in the shadow of the volcano that disrupted European air traffic earlier this month have watched their fields turn into a grey-brown desert of fine ash.
However, they are now worrying that the eruptions could trigger a much larger volcano next door.
Approximately 800 people were evacuated at the start of the eruption under the Eyjafjallajokull glacier in mid-April.
Most have returned to face the damage now that the danger of floods has receded.
Ash covered fields from the foot of the mountain south of the glacier to the sea. Houses and cars were also coated with a layer of dust several centimetres thick and the fine particles found their way inside homes and vehicles.
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“It is not very nice now, it is not very nice,” Gudni Thorvaldsson said as he surveyed his small farm of 50 sheep and 40 horses, which he mainly looks after during the summer as a break from his job in Reykjavik at the agricultural university.
The farm cottage has most of its doors taped up and the inside porch is still covered with a fine layer of ash. The sheep were indoors for fear of the possible toxic effect of the ash, which experts say may contain excessive amounts of fluoride.
“We saw the cloud of ash go behind these mountains, but the wind turned to us and it came over here,” Thorvaldsson said.
“Ash fell all the night and all the day after. All Saturday it was dark like the night.”
Anna Birna Thrainsdottir, who has a small farm further along the coast toward Reykjavik, said she lost her sense of time in the ash storm as day became night.
“I am happy to have daylight, but we have ash all over, 20 cm of ash. That is of course very bad. We just wait for the rain. We never wish for the rain, but now we wish for it,” she said.
“I am worried about what will happen next, will there be more ash in the eruption? We don’t know, and that is maybe the worst thing, not to know what will be next.”
Volcano experts say experience shows an eruption under the Eyjafjallajokull glacier can, but not always does, lead to the larger Katla volcano waking up. It last erupted in 1918.
Katla also has a much thicker layer of ice over it, and it was the magma hitting the ice at Eyjafjallajokull that caused the huge plume that shut down European air traffic for six days.
Professor Pall Einarsson of the Institute of Earth Sciences said the main problem from an eruption of Katla would be huge flooding because the magma would hit the 600 to 700 metre thick ice cap, which could unleash floods equal to the size of the Amazon River and possibly cause another ash plume.
“Katla just comes when it comes. We have been waiting for it about 20 years. Katla erupts once in every century and it last erupted in 1918, it is about time,” Thrainsdottir said.
Thorvaldsson agreed.
“We don’t know if it (Katla eruption) will happen now, but people are afraid of that. It is much more dangerous.”
