{"id":1159,"date":"2012-10-26T12:02:58","date_gmt":"2012-10-26T12:02:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/news\/2012\/10\/26\/iceland-warns-of-threat-of-big-earthquake\/"},"modified":"2012-10-26T12:02:58","modified_gmt":"2012-10-26T12:02:58","slug":"iceland-warns-of-threat-of-big-earthquake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/iceland-warns-of-threat-of-big-earthquake\/","title":{"rendered":"Iceland warns of threat of big earthquake"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Icelandic authorities warned people in the north of the island on Thursday to prepare for a possible big earthquake after the biggest tremors in the area for 20 years.<\/div>\n
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The north Atlantic island, where almost 320,000 people live, is a hotspot of volcanic and seismic activity as it straddles a fault in the earth’s surface.<\/div>\n
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The Civil Protection Department said in a statement that recent small quakes in an area under the sea about 20 km (12 miles) off the north of Iceland had prompted it to issue a warning to local people.<\/div>\n
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It said such shocks, one of which was a magnitude 5.6, often led to stronger quakes. Warnings were issued when there were grounds to expect a natural or manmade event that could threaten health and human safety, it added.<\/div>\n
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“People are anxious because they don’t know what might happen,” said Amundi Gunnarsson, chief of the fire brigade in Fjallabyggd, one of the small towns in the area, and a member of the Civil Protection Department.<\/div>\n
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“At the same time, life goes on as usual. People are going to work and children are going to school, but everyone is on alert,” he told Reuters by telephone.<\/div>\n
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The coastal area in the north is home to several small towns and a population of several thousand people.<\/div>\n
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The biggest town in the north of Iceland, Akureyri, has a population of about 17,000 people, and lies roughly 100 km south of the seismic activity.<\/div>\n
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Geologist Benedikt Ofeigsson said houses in Iceland could typically withstand quakes of a magnitude about 7.<\/div>\n
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“Of course there could be some damage to in walls and concrete in such strong earthquakes, but what is important that houses have stood firm,” he told Reuters.<\/div>\n
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http:\/\/www.reuters.com<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 Icelandic authorities warned people in the north of the island on Thursday to prepare for a possible big earthquake after the biggest tremors in the area for 20 years. The north Atlantic island, where…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1159"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1159\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}