Farmers in south Iceland who had to evacuate their farms because of the volcanic eruption in Eyjafjallajökull say they are not as concerned about the current eruption as about a potential eruption in the neighboring volcano Katla.
The infamous volcano Katla hides underneath the Mýrdalsjökull icecap. Photo by Páll Stefánsson.
“It is difficult,” Thorvaldur Helgaon, farmer at Svanavatn in the Austur-Landeyjar district, told mbl.is of the current situation. “I am concerned about all the animals, especially those which are kept inside.”
Helgason and Agnar Már Agnarsson, the farmer at Hallgeirseyjarhjáleiga, were in the mass care centre in the elementary school in Hvolsvöllur yesterday afternoon when they were notified that they could not go home to attend to their farm work.
Both of them received had a message about evacuation soon after 4 am that morning. Agnarsson is not satisfied with the message. “The farm phone rang but only briefly. It didn’t occur to us that it would be an evacuation because when evacuation occurred for the previous eruption, all the phones rang at once,” he said.
Agnarsson added that it had occurred to him that something might have happened to the notification system. But the residents take care of each other and Agnarsson’s neighbor knocked to find out whether he had received the notification.
“I am not afraid of this eruption but I fear Katla. It might not happen immediately but it will happen. Then we will be talking about much more power,” Agnarsson said.
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Click here to read more about the current eruption and here to read about the connection between Eyjafjallajökull and Katla.
