A volcano has erupted in southwest Iceland, sending lava flowing toward a nearby settlement

REYKJAVIK, Iceland — A volcano in southwest Iceland erupted for the second time in less than a month on Sunday, sending lava toward a nearby community and setting at least one home on fire.

The Icelandic Meteorological Office said the eruption, which began just before 8 a.m. local time, came after authorities evacuated the town of Grindavik following a series of small earthquakes. Hours later, a second fissure opened near the edge of the city and lava seeped toward homes.

“We are just watching it on cameras and there is nothing else we can do,” Grindavik resident Reinir Berg Jonsson told Icelandic RUV TV.

Grindavik is a city of 3,800 people located about 50 kilometers (30 miles) southwest of Reykjavik, the capital of Iceland. The community was previously evacuated in November after a series of earthquakes created large fissures in the ground between the city and the small mountain Selinjarville to the north. The nearby Blue Lagoon geothermal resort – one of Iceland's biggest tourist attractions – has also been temporarily closed.

The volcano finally erupted on December 18, and residents were allowed to return to their homes on December 22.

In the weeks that followed, emergency workers built defensive walls around Grindavik, but the barriers were incomplete and lava was moving toward the community, the Met Office said.

Before last month's eruption, the Svartsinji volcanic system north of Grindavik had been dormant for about 780 years. The volcano is located just a few kilometers west of Fagradalsfjall, which lay dormant for 6,000 years before bursting into life in March 2021.

Unlike the previous event, Saturday's eruption of Svartsingi volcano produced a “very fast flow” of lava that moved south toward Grindavik, said Kristin Jonsdottir of the Meteorological Office.

“Fortunately, we had some warnings, so we got increased earthquake activity, and all this was reported to Civil Protection, so the town of Grindavik was evacuated,” she said.

Iceland, which sits above a hot volcanic region in the North Atlantic Ocean, experiences an average of one eruption every four to five years.

The most destructive recent eruption of Eyjafjallajökull volcano in 2010 was that spewed clouds of ash into the atmosphere and disrupted transatlantic air travel for months.

Sunday's volcanic eruption on the Reykjanes Peninsula is not expected to release large amounts of ash into the air. Gudjon Helgason, press officer at airport operator Isavia, said operations at Keflavik Airport were continuing as usual.

But the residents of Grindavik are closely watching the slowly unfolding disaster as streams of smoking lava creep toward their homes.

“I really can't imagine what people are going through,” said Jeroen van Nieuwenhove, a nature photographer. “The fact that you can see this on TV, the fact that you can see this on webcams, it's a bit of a weird feeling to see a city being almost destroyed in slow motion at this point.”