I visited Iceland for fear of volcanic eruptions and earthquake chaos… Grindavik was literally torn in two, writes DAVID JONES

My feet are on either side of a winding crack, zigzagging across the asphalt. It’s pretty narrow here, but further down the road it becomes a gaping ten-foot-wide chasm, and as I stare into the steaming black void, it’s like I can see the bowels of the earth.

About 500 meters away lies a boiling river of molten lava with many winding tributaries. It has been conveniently located at the heart of the planet for centuries, but in recent weeks it has risen inexorably.

As you read it, it tries to gather the energy and find the underground paths that will facilitate its eventual journey through the surface.

And if, God forbid, this seething current erupts – as many experts fear – the remote fishing port of Grindavik on Iceland’s southwest coast will follow the same path as Pompeii, Tiwanaku and the other volcano-erasing remnants of ancient history.

To this day, this quaint outpost remains a ghost town. That has been the case since Friday, when a terrible earthquake with a thunderous boom reminiscent of the sound of low-flying fighter jets crashing through the sound barrier forced the emergency evacuation of 4,000 residents.

A road is damaged in the Icelandic town of Grindavik, which was evacuated on Tuesday due to volcanic activity.

A member of a search and rescue team jumps over the crack in a street in Grindavik

Entering Grindavik under police escort yesterday was a strange and nerve-racking experience. Leaving the final checkpoint, we drove through an eerie lunar landscape of low, lichen-covered hills and craters created by the last major eruption here, 2,400 years ago.

The land is treeless and dark, criss-crossed by bubbling gray cauldrons spewing steam. But the largest cloud, like that of a former railway locomotive, comes from a large geothermal power plant that supplies much of the energy in southern Iceland. Workers race against the clock to surround it with a wall that can protect it from the impending wave of lava.

When we reached the outskirts of town, we drove past abandoned fish salt factories, empty playgrounds, abandoned houses and cars.

It was as if all the clocks stopped here on a Friday night when the alarm went off and people were given a few minutes to grab essentials before fleeing for their lives.

Earlier yesterday, 50-year-old Grindavik resident Gudrun Eyjolfsdottir, who had just returned from work in the capital Reykjavik when the earthquake struck, eloquently described how it felt.

“We’re used to small earthquakes here, but this one was completely different,” the prosthetics technician told me as her car idled in the endless diaspora line waiting for permission to return home to her last precious possessions to fetch (in her case, a traditional Icelandic costume handed down from her great-grandmother).

“Usually the ground shakes a little, but it was like a ship in a terrible storm, tossing us up and down and side to side.

An emergency worker walks past a crack in a main street

A police officer stands by the crack in a street in Grindavik today

On Monday, a crack cut through the main street in Grindavik

A road was damaged in the village of Grindavik, which had to be evacuated due to volcanic activity

“When I walked into my apartment, a heavy wardrobe fell on me. Luckily it stuck to the door; otherwise I would have been crushed.”

Similar stories of near misses were told to me as I walked past the traffic lights.

But it wasn’t until I entered the Red Zone – the tightly cordoned-off area in the city center that suffered the worst devastation – that I realized how scared they must have been.

Here, Grindavik is literally torn in two, as one of the main roads through the town runs over a fault line deep in the earth’s crust.

Not only did it break into pieces, it also fell several meters so that it now looks like the edge of a treacherous precipice.

Curiously, the deepest and widest ditch is directly above a zebra crossing: a normally safe path used by children at the kindergarten just 350 meters away and by worshipers at a beautiful nearby church.

If they were on their way to school when the earth opened up and spewed boiling water from the geothermal pipes, they would surely have been swallowed or burned. That it was torn apart late in the afternoon when the school was closed and the nearby supermarket, gym and offices were empty is a small grace that the local residents – resilient people who call themselves “Grindvikings” – cling to.

And they need all the grace they can get. Although the scenes I saw yesterday were grim, my guide, police sergeant Stefan Velamir, said the damage was worst in another area too unstable to visit, where houses collapsed and fell apart like Lego buildings. bricks.

As dusk fell, the young police officer led me back to the Land Cruiser.

As we talked, he said gravely, the sidewalk slowly continued to slide, sinking a few inches each day. It was time to go. Looking back at the steaming fissure, I asked him if, even if the fissure volcano spreading its tentacles below us did not erupt soon, anyone could safely return and live here again.

He gave an uncertain but optimistic answer. Back in the capital, however, an experienced volcanologist painted a more realistic picture, saying it would take many years of geological calm before anyone could rule out the possibility of an eruption.

Thus the disadvantaged Grindvikings find themselves in a quandary.

As they rely on the charity of family, friends and a host of strangers to rehome them, it will take all their stoicism to pull through.