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An eruption has begun north of Grindavík

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Re: An eruption has begun north of Grindavík

#21

Post by bitcharmer »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #9
rightbyte wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least that edge of it. Imagine owning the house over the road where the lava is heading right now, watching the disaster in slow motion. I guess the lava flow could stop right in front of it? Edit: Nevermind ...

Iceland has socialised National Catastrophe Insurance. The premiums are very low but if your house is lava'd or avalanched you get a reasonable payout. Of course it's better if that doesn't happen, but if it does there's solid support for the victims.

This would never happen in the USA. Pure communism

Re: An eruption has begun north of Grindavík

#22

Post by ceejayoz »

fanf2 wrote: post #19
ceejayoz wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They did exactly that. It worked great, but this new fissure is lava that went under . See https://imgur.com/a/7WGO9M6 ; yellow are the defensive lines. Red are the fissures. Black is the lava; you can see how well it was redirected.

Working link — https://en.vedur.is/media/uncategorized/Kort_StadsetningGoss... From https://en.vedur.is/about-imo/news/a-seismic-swarm-started-n...

Sorry, fixed my link. The semicolon broke it. https://imgur.com/a/7WGO9M6

Re: An eruption has begun north of Grindavík

#23

Post by roywiggins »

bitcharmer wrote: post #21
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Iceland has socialised National Catastrophe Insurance. The premiums are very low but if your house is lava'd or avalanched you get a reasonable payout. Of course it's better if that doesn't happen, but if it does there's solid support for the victims.

This would never happen in the USA. Pure communism

The American equivalent is probably the national flood insurance program.

Re: An eruption has begun north of Grindavík

#24

Post by jon_richards »

ygra wrote: post #16
kabouseng wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lava is molten rock. Concrete blocks are rock.

Also from the blog: > Benedikt Halldórsson of the Met Office says houses are not designed to withstand lava flow. > »... You can expect the walls to give way from the load, and the heat in the lava is such that it burns everything in its path.« Apart from the heat, since it's molten rock it also has considerable mass, and the lava flow continues pushing from behind.

One weird realization I had is that lava is over three times as dense as water, so if you tired to “swim” in it, you’d basically just sit on top.

Re: An eruption has begun north of Grindavík

#25

Post by FireBeyond »

roywiggins wrote: post #23
bitcharmer wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would never happen in the USA. Pure communism

The American equivalent is probably the national flood insurance program.

The annoying thing about that is that it lets people repeatedly keep building in exactly the same spot.

Not without an inconvenience, but it's almost like "every time it floods enough you get a home upgrade".

Re: An eruption has begun north of Grindavík

#26

Post by sixothree »

ceejayoz wrote: post #17
sixothree wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This may be a dumb question but near me is a cement factory that (incidentally) makes stackable concrete blocks the size of a car. They stack them multiple stories high and multiple blocks deep, at least while being stored at the factory. What about lava makes it so we can’t redirect the flow around neighborhoods with these things?

They did exactly that. It worked great, but this new fissure is lava that went under . See https://imgur.com/a/7WGO9M6 ; yellow are the defensive lines. Red are the fissures. Black is the lava; you can see how well it was redirected.

This thread is really the closest I get to lava or lava knowledge so this is very helpful actually.

Re: An eruption has begun north of Grindavík

#27

Post by sixothree »

meheleventyone wrote: post #15
sixothree wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This may be a dumb question but near me is a cement factory that (incidentally) makes stackable concrete blocks the size of a car. They stack them multiple stories high and multiple blocks deep, at least while being stored at the factory. What about lava makes it so we can’t redirect the flow around neighborhoods with these things?

There is a berm that got built around the north of the town but unfortunately the fissures go under the town. The initial eruption came across the barrier so a lot of the lava has been diverted. The second eruption was inside the barrier so not a lot can be done. If you scroll down the linked page there’s a map of the flow and barriers. There’s footage of them saving the machinery being used to build the barriers.

Thank you

Re: An eruption has begun north of Grindavík

#28

Post by dylan604 »

jon_richards wrote: post #24
ygra wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also from the blog: > Benedikt Halldórsson of the Met Office says houses are not designed to withstand lava flow. > »... You can expect the walls to give way from the load, and the heat in the lava is such that it burns everything in its path.« Apart from the heat, since it's molten rock it also has considerable mass, and the lava flow continues pushing from behind.

One weird realization I had is that lava is over three times as dense as water, so if you tired to “swim” in it, you’d basically just sit on top.

That's not what happened to Gollum

Re: An eruption has begun north of Grindavík

#29

Post by dylan604 »

numlocked wrote: post #2

About an hour drive from Reykjavík, Iceland.

That's not very helpful for people not from Iceland as far as indicating distance. An hour drive doing 60mph is totally different from windy roads along a coast line or through valleys.

Google Maps isn't too useful: "Sorry, we could not calculate driving directions from "Reykjavík, Iceland" to "Grindavik, Iceland"

Re: An eruption has begun north of Grindavík

#30

Post by everybodyknows »

FireBeyond wrote: post #25
roywiggins wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The American equivalent is probably the national flood insurance program.

The annoying thing about that is that it lets people repeatedly keep building in exactly the same spot. Not without an inconvenience, but it's almost like "every time it floods enough you get a home upgrade".

People can afford beachfront houses often have friends in high places.
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