By: Derek Chang
Wednesday night, three tourists were injured while trying to climb the rough terrain of the erupting Meradalir volcano in Iceland.
The tourists were injured with a broken ankle being the most serious injury. A rescue helicopter showed up to help the tourist with the broken ankle to the hospital, while the other two were brought off the mountain with other vehicles.
Rough terrain and liquid lava make climbing a mountain even harder. As a result, when the tourists were injured on the top part of the A trail, that part of the trail was closed for crew to make the trail safer and less rough.
The crew have tried to warn people many times that climbing the mountain is not a “walk in the park”, as the spokeswoman, Hjordis Gudmundsdottir, calls it. She says, People have to be careful and in good clothes and good shoes. We are trying to tell that to both Icelanders and our foreign friends.”
Iceland is famous for its volcanoes. It has 30 active volcanoes and is on the edge of two tectonic plates.
Earth is made of tectonic plates that move around and shift position constantly but slowly. Land volcanoes form when a tectonic plate goes under another one. As a result, there are a lot more volcanoes near the edges of tectonic plates.
The way volcanoes erupt is pretty complicated. In the center of Earth, it is so hot that the rock is constantly melting and turning into a thick liquid called magma. Since the newly made substance is lighter than the rock around it, it collects in small chambers.
Then, the magma can build up so much pressure that it escapes through a vent in the ground. If the magma is thin, the gasses inside it escapes, releases the pressure from the magma, and it runs out of the ground. However, if it is thick, the gasses can’t get out, and even more pressure builds up until it explodes out of the ground.
Sources: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/04/world/europe/fagradalsfjall-iceland-volcano-tourists.html?searchResultPosition=1