A huge drone used to map the soil

The Icelandic Road Administration started mapping the soil in Grindavík yesterday with a special earthscan equipment. A soil-drone was brought to the country with experts from the Netherlands, but it is planned to fly the earth-scan in a coordinate system over the town.

Odd­ur Sig­ur­ðsson Hagalín, a geotechnical engineer at the Icelandic Road Administration, tells Morgunblaðið that the project will take about three to four weeks to execute. He hopes that the first phase will be completed this week – to reach the main routes in and out of the town to support the preparation of a value rescue.

Data analysed in Sweden and set in stereoscopic form in Poland

Sigurðsson says that the data will be sent to Sweden where the producer of the earthscan will help to analyse it and then it will be sent to Poland where it will be put into a three-dimensional form.

A 300 metre electric line will be connected over the hot lava field

Landsnet connected a 300 meter electrical line across the lava field north of Grindavík yesterday. Two 18-meter high masts had been built on either side of the lava field before, but the cable that was under the lava field gave way the previous night, so that the town was without electricity.

It is expected that electricity will be restored today. Landsnet's backup power generators were connected to the town, but as one of them failed, the third was brought into town last night. Late last night, the backup power generator was connected and started to supply power to the distribution system. There is no precedent for operations like this in Iceland .