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For the second time this month, the long dormant Eyjafjallajö
The volcano's popularity has proved to be an enormous headache for the authorities.
Iceland's Civil Protection Department says rescue teams were forced to aid up to 50 people a day down from the site, where temperatures dipped to -17 Celsius and biting winds. Two Icelandic visitors lost their lives after they became lost and their car ran out of petrol on a trip to the site.
Enormous clouds of volcanic ash was trapped by strong southerly winds and flung across Europe. Up to 5000 flights alone were cancelled on Thursday. This involved airports in Denmark, Finland Belgium, England, Ireland, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Russia. Paris and Brussels had difficulty with their flights. The incident is being described as the worst airspace restriction in living memory.
Iceland’s airports were open as the wind had carried the ash away from the island.
The flight bans were put in place because the ash created difficulty with visibility, plus the danger of tiny particles of ash jamming aircraft engines. “Firstly it is highly abrasive and can scour and damage moving parts,” one expert told BBC. “Secondly, if it enters a jet engine the intense heat of the engine can fuse it to the interior of the engine with a caking of hot glass, which ultimately can cause the engine to cut out completely.”
Steam and smoke hung suspended over the volcano under the Eyjafjallajö
Ash and red-hot lava spewed from a crater between two glaciers. "The volcanic activity has essentially stopped," said Einar Kjartansson, a geophysicist at the Icelandic Meteorological Office. "I believe the eruption has ended." The volcano had laid dormant for almost 200 years.
University of Iceland geologist Magnus Tumi Gudmundsson said , " The activity at the volcano had declined steeply in the last couple of days, although it's too early to write its death certificate."
Scientists say history shows that through the years when Eyjafjallajokull erupts, the much bigger Katla volcano nearby often follows within days or months. The last major blow from Katla was in 1918.
Iceland’s volcanoes have erupted one third of the total global lava output during the past 500 years. The island sits on the boundary between the Eurasian and North American Plates. The Eyjafjallajö
About Icelandic Volcano Disrupts Hundreds Of Thousands
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