Iceland is rushing to house residents left homeless by volcanic eruption

To house the evacuees of Grindavik, the Icelandic town where lava flowed into some homes after a volcanic eruption last week, a former prime minister proposed building a new town from scratch. One politician said Airbnbs on the island should be limited to make room for residents. And a radio host suggested they turn away asylum seekers to focus resources on helping “refugees” from Grindavik.

“Evacuating 1 percent of the country,” said Prime Minister Katrin Jakobsdottir, “is a major challenge.”

Grindavik, a fishing village in southwestern Iceland, is still threatened by volcanic eruptions and experts consider it uninhabitable for the foreseeable future. Before the eruption, about 3,700 people lived there, a significant number for Iceland, whose total population is only 400,000. Authorities are doing their utmost to house residents and limit their financial losses, and the issue dominates the national debate.

Residents of the city live in hotel rooms, in summer houses, in temporary rental apartments or are hosted by relatives.

Thorgerdur Eliasdottir, 67, a restaurant worker from Grindavik, said she and her cat had moved five times since the city was first evacuated in November. She said she plans to move again soon, to an apartment she can rent for three months.

“I have an old wooden house in Grindavik,” she said in a telephone interview. “I wish the government would just put it on a car and drive it to a safe location.”

Iceland's housing market was already saturated due to a combination of population growth and tourism, which has picked up again after the pandemic. According to the Icelandic Tourist Board, more than 8,000 bedrooms in the capital region were available for short-term rentals as of last summer.

For those interested in purchasing a home, the interest rate is over 9 percent.

Fannar Jonasson, the mayor of Grindavik, whose office has moved to the city hall in the capital Reykjavik, said the scarcity of housing meant residents were now spread out across the country, with many struggling to find long-term housing to find.

“We are now working on a long-term solution on all fronts,” he said in a telephone interview on Thursday.

Grindavik's population has grown rapidly in recent years due to an influx of people from Reykjavik, which is only about 30 miles away.

After the eruption, banks agreed to freeze mortgage payments for residents, but residents said they could not get insurance benefits unless their homes were immediately destroyed.

Bryndis Gunnlaugsdottir, a lawyer and former resident of Grindavik, said that when she saw her neighbor's house covered in lava but her own house still standing, “it was the worst moment since the evacuation.”

She said Tuesday at a packed town hall-style meeting with politicians and scientists, adding that if her house were to go up in flames, her financial stress would ease.

“The noose around my neck would disappear,” she said, because her home would then be covered by insurance.

The government now partially subsidizes the rent of Grindavik's former residents, but lawmakers are discussing a bill that would allow the government to buy all the houses there and then return them to their former owners once the area was deemed safe again.

Vilhjalmur Arnason, a lawmaker and resident of Grindavik, said this would be the only way to meet the demands of locals.

“Now let's build a new house,” he said in a telephone interview as he left a meeting with the government's finance committee in Reykjavik. “So we can find a new point to start from.”

Volcanologists said that, according to predictions, volcanic activity on the southwestern Reykjanes Peninsula, where Grindavik is located, would last 10 to 20 years. Recent earthquakes have also caused cracks in the city, and last month a construction worker fell into a crater believed to be 40 meters deep. He is believed to be dead. The eruption also broke the main pipe that carried hot water to Grindavik's homes.

“The grounds for people to inhabit Grindavik are not in sight,” said Magnus Tumi Gudmundsson, who advises the civil protection agency.

But Mr Gudmundsson added that volcanic activity could move away from the craters threatening Grindavik, making the city safe again.

Gisli Palsson, an anthropology professor who studied the impact of a 1973 eruption in the Westman Islands, the last time a volcanic eruption displaced part of Iceland's population, said the doom predictions for Grindavik reminded him of the desperate tone in the first weeks after the eruption. eruption there.

“At first, a lot of people said it was over for the city,” he said. But, he added, when the eruption stopped, many people who had strong roots in the area eventually moved back.