"You look at your house in the background"

“You just look at your house in the background and you’re obviously not feeling well,” says Hlynur Sæberg Helgason, who lives with his family in a house at Efrahóp in Grindavík, a stone’s throw from the new fissure that opened up at the upper part of town.

The home of this six-person family is clearly visible in live-stream from the eruption. “One only hopes that there will not be much power in this fissure and that it will clear before it reaches the houses,” Helgason tells us.

He says the family was not present when the town was evacuated last night, as they have not been staying in the town since the last eruption. The family is now in a summer house, but the oldest boys are in an apartment that the family has access to in Keflavík.

He said he had the opportunity to stay in the house because he is a rescue-fighter and was actively involved in the search for the man who fell into a crack in the town last Wednesday. Despite the great and challenging task, it was good to be able to sleep in one’s own bed and be in one’s own home, he said.

“You just have to stay optimistic”

Everything that is happening in relation to the eruption is being monitored closely.

“It’s very weird all together. It’s clearly this fissure that’s visible on the screen that’s lying right through the town that’s rifling up and it’s a question of how far it will go.”

When asked if it’s difficult to look up from the screen, he answers yes. “But I’m now a rescue team member and you feel like you should go home, but I don’t know what I should be doing there. I’ve also been thinking whether I should go home and get something, but I don’t think that will happen.”

He says that everything inside the house was left, as there wasn’t much to take when the town was evacuated in December. “We just took pictures of the walls and clothes with the intention of going home again soon, and we’ve had hopes for that. Then we didn’t have to take anything else from the house, as I have an Airbnb apartment rented.”

“You just still have hope that this will work out and the lave will stop an that we can return to our home one day. You just have to stay optimistic, until you know something different,” he concludes.