when we've got close up for you next, looking at located those in iceland, where lava is a fact of life. i'm terry martin for me and all of us here at the the the news thanks for watching the issues with a lot say what the on january 14th, 2024 disaster struck the coastal iceland town of green the bank. there

was never supposed to be a possibility of both cane or ups and in quint, they're just round to doing a crack opened in the earth's surface. love of began flowing towards the town. the dream to vic defamation is an unprecedented globally for having the formation of the risk valley in the middle of the populated area. more than 3000 people were evacuated, residents could only look on as lava flows bore down on their homes. he saw the lava slowly moving into town and it was just like watching assess to move in slow motion. you couldn't do anything with your students. first house school, everybody to pay the you knew during

the state the for the 1st time in 800 years, the lava field beneath green the big is once again active. the town's inhabitants are now scattered all over iceland, torn between the need to carry on with their lives and the hope that they may yet be able to return home. we had a town meeting with the government and i told them that story this so they would understand how much, totally hard to this, to not have a whole loose all your money at the same time as you lose to community years you your security and residents have had to be relocated, businesses closed, the one man who fell into

a crack and the earth's crust couldn't be rescued. the question for residents is, when will it be safe to return to their homes or will green the vic remain a ghost town forever? when we look at the distribution where the grabbing isn't going to fix, it's a low lying area. we know the lava is like water, it's like a river. it takes the lowest level and the landscape, right? rivers don't flow over the top of mountains. lava doesn't flow over the top of mountains, so the easiest path is to go straight through town. there's nothing that can be done. brenda is going to start to home. was born in green, the vic like the other over 3000 residents of the coastal town. she had to leave her home on very short notice. today she's coming back to green to victor the 1st time in weeks hoping to recover a few last items from her house. you go home,

but it's not home. it's not the same. it's my house. it's almost empty. there's no people there to this new job. so now it just 3rd school even as the so mat, if this thing is close, it has an open circuit that's a little bit you know for you i because i don't know the rules on who's allowed to enter the town can change by the minute iceland us department of civil protection and emergency management keeps track of everyone who's including the vic at any time of the day or night that way. authorities can evacuate the town immediately in the event of another, a rupture that uh, which could happen at any time, but also what, what i said, oh, okay. that, to the authorities tell brenda's to drive straight to her house and to leave again as soon as possible. in the movies,

do you see the volcanoes and you always think about the wolf cables and the 2nd part the lava. but what is really destroyed in this town is not the volcanoes and the lava. it's the earth moving because of it and that there are cracks. going through town and they're just opening up the town. they're destroyed, houses. the disaster occurred not 50 kilometers from the iceland, a capital re cubic. aside from the 900 metre long fisher northeast of green, the vic, another crack opened at the northern edge of the town, scorching 3 houses with lava. brenda's house just barely escaped being swallowed up as well. my house is very close to the law, but if it came into town then, well, yard has been punched off because there's a crack going to it. if this doesn't feel safe and this

you 30 wanda level. just go into town. but let me run them to town and it took the 1st house, the damage was done, you know, the town was heard. and i remember the only thing i wish for at the time was the law of a gold away and pig my house. because the pain of not knowing what the future would look like. or if my house would be like, i would get no money for it. or whatever, if i lose all my basically investments was so much that i rather wanted the lava to go over my house. and everything would have been done over, i would be paid by the insurance and i couldn't move on with the life the there's no reason to be here. and the people who are here are usually working and

they'll talk on the hopper. so it's just that goes to the yeah, it's this set this home home because it's not, oh yeah, there's like a opening team here. like here is this guy because of the force kind of seeking a little bit finally, se the the

pain of not knowing your future and having all your savings in the house that you can't sell. you can't live in. you can be there and not being able to build the future. and that's the no, i'm freshman. i just want to build a home. i don't want to nest. i want to have a baby in the suit. q a y requirement. the i've been born and raised to been school here is a kid. i have not all my friends. so my family here i was in the city council. i how bills the town of coach basketball like oh my big trifle. that's been happening

here and it was always supposed to be here. the doesn't have any are in the left here too long. the dentist regularly checks your phone for updates at any time she might learn that the ground has opened up even more or that researchers have managed to estimate when, if ever green the vic will become habitable again, or one of those researchers is gregory de pasco, a few kilometers away, he's working to answer these questions so vital. the green vics future. i think i

was always curious. i really loved mountains. so i was really curious, why mountains are there? why do you have, you know, areas that are flat and why do you have areas, you know, big spiky peaks like the elves, the and these are the rocky mountains tectonics that are really the driving force. it's kind of a balance between tectonics and climate. gregory to pass go, teaches tectonics and structural geology at the university of iceland. t in the background is just the lucky in graduate student danielle forest. there are studying with fishers in the earth's crust from the air tracking how they change here, and where it's really smoking a lot is where it's hitting the barriers. so we're doing repeated surveys of the tracts, overtime with the drones. and so we can use drones to surveys, we're doing high resolution photography and the photos we can states together

using the modeling technique called for the grammar tree. and we can make very high resolution photo so we can actually have photos that are for models that are on the order of like 10 sending me to resolution. so it's incredibly high resolution. so we can track how these faults and fishers move or do not move over time using this digital photography. the case of danny. just keep an eye out for if you mind, maybe even just go to like that hill. if it looks safe to go on top of it and just look for any helicopters or planes the, so we're located in the north atlantic and we're not far from the arctic circle right now. and this is an ot hunting spreading center space for creating crust. so the, the earth is actually extending in this area and most of the time it doesn't

actually do any extending. it's just sitting there waiting then at some point, stress builds up on the system the when the faults rupture, the energy that we experience as an earthquake, the sometimes the stress in the system needs 100000 years or something happens. gregory takes hundreds of photos later to combine them into one high resolution image. danielle records all the important data needed for a geological computer model, the no way back. it's like 210 meters. and then i'll try to come back even lower, maybe like

a 150 of the drones, our radical revolution. how science has done and tried his teacher students how it's done. sorry, i'm trying to monitor this as well. i go too far. i'm in the atlantic ocean, so that's but know things are changing really, really rapidly. every time we have earthquakes, we want to see if these are moving still. it's really important for recovery and safety because there's, you know, still people working nearby here at some of these factories. so, and it of course, could still abrupt again, we think it's winter up to any time the past 3 years have seen repeated erupt. sions in the region. but only recently have they started effecting residential areas. and it's not just the inhabitants of grinda, vic, in february 2020 for interruption disrupted hot water supplies to 30000 people

living nearby. at a time when temperatures were around minus 10 degrees celsius in order to predict future russians as accurately as possible. researchers have set up 30 gps stations around when the vic so between interruptions. the whole thing starts the dome up over a large area. and so these gps stations record how that's moving over time, and then effectively when the rupture does take place, it's like pricking the top of the balloon, the balloon starts to deflate back down. and so these stations will actually move down between her options are immediately after options and then they start inflating again slowly. and so it's one of the moderate monitoring ways we used to track how things are changing over time. and the really important the gps data is vital for green. the big safety before the ground began opening up. this was one of

iceland, the wealthiest towns, thanks to its abundance fishing industry. seafood companies are eager to get processing plants up and running again. but 1st, the protective barrier around the town has to be extended to divert lava around residential areas. it's an expensive undertaking. before the disaster going to fix economy was strong enough to support several professional sports teams. brenda, this is co coach of the towns female basketball team since evacuating basketball games are some of the few chances she has to meet other former residents purchasing know in the gym. that is kind of like our whole life mall. and we have a game tomorrow against natalie to tell like, arrival team product because this is what

we need to keep the communities together. people up showing up for games and i can just see in the faces how much the team is inspiring them to keep on. and the girls know they feel it to the field of responsibility and they're actually handling it on the teams captain. his food of york or loves daughter like so many others. she was torn away from her home and for community i absolutely hated like i'm so it's like a home buddy of mine and all the people in the tell, like just the community. it's really like really like hard times business like landscape, who's the entre teammates currently trained 6 times a week there in the middle of iceland premier league season. but basketball has become much more than just a game. and for the green, the big players,

we can meet up as a court and it's safe. and it's happy. and we can actually fight and argue and let out some energy and it's good. it's good for everybody. cool to players and fans. back at the university of iceland, gregory de pasco, compiles the geological data from his excursion degree. and so this is the main western boundary of what we're calling. you're going to be going to vic robin . and so we, we flew over this to try to understand basically if things are changing or, or not. so there's only a little bit of evidence we can see for movement within a couple of 100 meters of this crack. and then after that there's nothing further west, so everything's happening from this crack and east. so most of the populated area is used to displace the road or on the surface. the cracks appear small here. but

beneath them are chasms up to 40 meters deep, and then it keeps the researchers even found salt water at the bottom of some the tone change late. it was kind of, these are options were happening in the middle of nowhere. and the impact was basically a bit of smoke and i mean, i can see why people get into volcano tourism. right. because it's very special. it's very special. but then it changed for granted back and suddenly became serious . yeah, i think, i guess. yeah, yeah. it's impossible, not according to gregory's assessment, prentice and the rest of brenda vicks residents won't be able to return home for the foreseeable future. from my perspective, yeah, it is really bad. i mean, those are permanent, we, we, we call it a permanent ground information. it's like these faults move and they're not going back. we know from the history iceland that iceland is going to keep splitting apart. so the tennessee, the target for those faults to keep moving over time, can't go back in time. we're on a time machine say don't build in graphic,

but now that we know there's all these faults, are there, maybe we should be really conscientious about land use. many a printed ex former residents are still looking for new homes. prentice was able to move in with their partner cost involved in a sense, but it's not quite how the couple had hoped to start this new chapter of their lights on. yeah, and it wasn't supposed to happen in a friday afternoon in a, in a chaotic situation. then me cry all the time. we were supposed to be a high speed failures moment. this is, you know, i always pictured the top coming with all the phones and all my stuff and real like, sit down on the couch in the evening. so happy, finally living together, but instead it was like me, my basketball friend that came with us, the 2 casts and i was crying, watching tv about what would happen to my town. it's so it's not how you want to start living together at this top, of course, that it may even have

a good then and a healthy baby. henry can stuff like that. now with journey as a family of 3 together, then i would thought that would be, i don't know, 6 years old, the 10 years old at the north going like post getting the credit is kinda like this coast town. a view to sound like all your mom used to live here, like in this town and see what the whole case you're standing here. but instead taking co like to visit on france, i like your mom used to live here. but you know, this thing happened, but now everything is fine to like, hopefully, like that said dream scenario. but of course, like, you know, you never know how to fix the thing. they will move back to be, will buy your no, no, but you're still playing volleyball. you do the top. remember 50 now and i am on top of it. they have not. oh yeah,

i need to see if there was scenario appropriate if the town what's going to allow or you know there with the met like i'm fit to live in and view just has 2 funds on it kinda likes to repeat the i would say it's a little bit normal now, because especially from case must be it has 2 or 3 already. so it's kind of like, like like you say now the most major point of it making paths like over do you think the next will change of income? so it's kind of almost like a day now. so it's, i think they're expecting to get used to it a little bit, but of course gas daily. and i'm afraid what's been what it was due to the town and the town nearby. also

while most one to put as much distance as possible between themselves and the volcano, others are trying to get as near as they can. so i like my wife says every time is uh i have uh, i have a mistress and this. okay. one of them is volcano hunter viewing steinbeck. it's a totally same experience as when it was a photo. i mean it's, it's totally same experience and i know people are going to built in like this guy is so freaking crazy. but, but that's what it's. so, you know, you see something and you get really fascinated and then you go like, oh my god, i got to see it again. i mean, just like, you know, when you meet a woman or a boy or whatever, i mean, that's just the feeling you get. you just want to see that person again like and again, you're basically gonna consume this the 2nd, the same feeling i had. when i saw the volcano who even wouldn't be

on his watching his son, tristan play soccer. he always keeps an eye on the latest earth, quick data, so that he won't miss the next spectacular interruption. it's a waiting game. it's a waiting game. uh. is it gonna rock? does it not gonna look? i'm thing about next. the reps in 247. i check the seismic activity probably towards be 4 times an hour. you know, i haven't been getting a lot of sleep so it's, it's combined so it gets pretty accessed to be on son, tristan doesn't share his father's obsession. and he's just always asking if it's have a rough tune that is like kinda and i, i just don't have interest in it then. yeah, i don't care much about a a reps and a happens right now. i would just like to know that i have to go,

i would jump in my kind of go through my housing. we would be out there in an hour, hour and a half. the to day is a big day for going to fix basketball fans. the women's team is playing against their arch rivals from your to be. this is a big game for us, not just because this team's number 2 or 3, but it's also because this is our neighboring house. unfortunately, we've been usually the team that loses and i want to feel a little distress because best means that this matters to me. this matters to the

team. so yeah, i have the right kinds of aimless stress to get me focused and prepared for the grid of advance have come to support their team and to catch up with friends. well this is actually the moment that makes my day to come here and see the people of inventory because this is literally the only the only time of the day. what do you see? everybody competing here, playing basketball after all this situation at home. it's kind of crazy. so many people traumatize, so many people there. can't even think about going back. so afraid of ok. no. i'm confused and i hope that everybody makes it you turn that thing. the amazing is what we missed. the most of

the the game is neck and neck yard. we can bring to the our time hanging over the contest is the fact that this could be granted fix last season without training facilities or local sponsors, the team can support itself. the place is the last season, which i don't believe when would be great to say good bye. when the title between the in the, in going to the quinn's 77 to 69 or the i'm just super happy and super part of the team is almost to describe the feeling like just playing on the board for my home team. the amazing and

i love every time i have a game, i'm the super excited the for me this is the only place where i feel like i'm still in between somebody doing something on the core uh with, with home sharing them off to make me yeah. so probably feel like the for a few days after going to expect to be on the court. the ground explodes again without any warning the erupt and lasts for weeks and forms of permanent crater the town is spared the law, but for now. but even so, the iceland,

a government offers residents to buy their homes. brenda center neighbors can finally move on and look to the future. i decided that i want to sell my house because i want to buy a new home where i can feel safe, that i can have my family, my baby, and that way i'm financially secure. that way i can take care of myself mentally, and i have the energy to actually focus on keeping the community together, keeping things that we could live away from synthetic the despite researchers wary out books been just hasn't given up hope for her hometown. i political hope, a lead, i don't know, went, but at some point i would, i helped rebuild it the

they were brought together by chance. and they roots in the early ninety's and independence, free woman. and the mother of 10, in a strict patriarchy the sooner they can, they not assess team to, it's has been observing the lines of how dia and hit dorsey's edison. this is lines that have been shaped by debris, tennessee rule, and religious constraint. what he's telling me

to waste his mind, katia and his daughters starts june 22nd on d w. the the joy of a wedding intends any of these beautiful women. and every day life in germany, christie on kaiser is a doctor at a german university clinic. his wife, irene, comes from townsend in a couple live together in my book and have 2 daughters christy, on dreams of moving the whole family to townsend and where he wants to work as a doctor. irene, so is less than enthusiastic.