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Title: Volcanic Ash Grounds Flights Across Europe:Tens of thousands of passengers will be stranded..
Source:
WKYT AP
URL Source: http://www.wkyt.com/home/headlines/90936459.html
Published: Apr 15, 2010
Author: ROBERT BARR and JILL LAWLESS AP writers
Post Date: 2010-04-15 11:04:53 by Murron
Keywords: None
Views: 3611
Comments: 30
By ROBERT BARR and JILL LAWLESS Volcanic Ash Grounds Flights Across Europe:Tens of thousands of passengers will be stranded Thursday because of the volcano in Iceland. LONDON (AP) - Ash from Iceland's spewing volcano halted air traffic across a wide swathe of Europe on Thursday, grounding planes on a scale not seen since the 9/11 terror attacks. Thousands of flights were canceled, tens of thousands of passengers were stranded and officials said it was not clear when it would be safe enough to fly again. In a sobering comment, one scientist in Iceland said the ejection of volcanic ash - and therefore disruptions in air travel - could continue for days or even weeks. Authorities stopped all flights over Britain, Ireland and the Nordic countries. The shutdown closed London's five major airports including Heathrow, Europe's busiest, a major trans-Atlantic hub that handles over 1,200 flights and 180,000 passengers per day. With the cloud drifting south and east across Britain, the country's air traffic service banned all non-emergency flights until at least 7 a.m. (0600 GMT, 2 a.m. EDT) Friday. Irish authorities closed their air space for at least eight hours, and aviation authorities in Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland took similar precautions. Airport shutdowns and flight cancellations spread across Europe - to France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Ireland, Sweden, Finland and Switzerland - as well as around the world. The volcano's smoke and ash poses a threat to aircraft because it can affect visibility, and microscopic debris can get sucked into airplane engines and can cause them to shut down. Health officials said the plume, which rose to between 20,000 feet and 36,000 feet (6,000 meters and 11,000 meters), posed no threat to human health. Airlines in the United States were canceling some flights to Europe and delaying others. Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Laura Brown said her agency was working with airlines to try to reroute some flights around the ash cloud, which lies above the Atlantic Ocean close to the flight paths for most routes from the U.S. east coast to Europe.
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Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 30.
#1. To: Murron (#0)
Got any good satellite pics which show this volcanic ash?
In this aerial photo's above, molten lava is seen as it vents from a rupture near the Eyjafjallajokull glacier in Iceland, as a volcano erupts early Sunday, March 21, 2010. Some hundreds of people have been evacuated from a small village in southern Iceland on Sunday after a volcanic eruption which shot ash and molten lava into the air, marking the first major eruption there in nearly 200 years. Second Volcano Erupts in Iceland April 14, 2010 11:45 AM CBS News RAW: A volcanic eruption shook Eyjafjallajokull, Iceland for the second time in a month. Hundreds were evacuated from the thinly populated area. CBS News correspondent Elizabeth Palmer reports from an unusually quiet Heathrow that the ash cloud now covers most of Britain, Scandinavia and other parts of northern Europe. The volcano, which sits under a glacier in Iceland, erupted Wednesday for the second time in less than a month, melting ice, spewing smoke and steam, closing a major road and forcing hundreds of people to flee rising floodwaters. Authorities evacuated 800 residents from around the Eyjafjallajokull glacier as water gushed down the mountainside and rivers rose by up to 10 feet. Iceland's main coastal ring road was closed near the volcano, and workers smashed holes in the highway in three spots in a bid to give the rushing water a clear route to the coast and prevent bridges from being swept away. Vidir Reynisson, a manager with Iceland's Civil Protection Department, said that by late afternoon the flooding appeared to have peaked. "But the water is still flowing down to the ocean so it will be some hours before we have a better view of what kind of damage has occurred," he said. Scientists said the eruption under the ice cap was 10 to 20 times more powerful than one last month, and carried a much greater risk of widespread flooding. "This is a very much more violent eruption, because it's interacting with ice and water," said Andy Russell, an expert in glacial flooding at the University of Newcastle in northern England. "It becomes much more explosive, instead of a nice lava flow oozing out of the ground." (AP/CBS/USGS)Civil protection official Agust Gunnar Gylfason said emergency workers rescued some 70 tourists and visitors trapped near the volcano since Wednesday morning. He said the party - including Norwegian visitors - are now safe in a tourist facility and officials are trying to transport them out of the area. No lives or properties were in immediate danger, Gylfason said. Scientists said there was no sign of increased activity at the much larger Katla volcano nearby. Iceland's Meteorological Office said a plume of steam rose at least five miles into the air. Scientists aboard a Coast Guard plane that flew over the volcano said the new fissure appeared to be up to 1.2 miles long. The volcano, about 75 miles east of Reykjavik, erupted March 20 after almost 200 years of silence. The original eruption petered out earlier this week. But Gunnar Gudmundsson, a geophysicist at the Icelandic Meteorological Office, said there were a series of tremors overnight, and rivers in the area began rising Wednesday morning - strong evidence of a new eruption under the glacier. Last month's eruption struck near the glacier in an area that had no ice. Gudmundsson said the new eruption appeared to be about five to six miles west of the original fissure. "Most probably this eruption is taking place at the summit ... under the ice," he said. Pall Einarsson, a geophysicist at the University of Iceland, said magma was melting a hole in the 650-foot thick ice covering the volcano's crater, sending floodwater coursing down the glacier into lowland areas. Residents were evacuated to a Red Cross center in the nearby community of Hvolsvollur, the Civil Protection Department said. Iceland, a nation of 320,000 people, sits on a large volcanic hot spot in the Atlantic's mid-oceanic ridge. Volcanic eruptions are often triggered by seismic activity when the Earth's plates move and when magma from deep underground pushes its way to the surface. The last time there was an eruption near the 100-square-mile Eyjafjallajokull glacier was in 1821. A bigger worry is Katla, which in the past has erupted in tandem with Eyjafjallajokull. Katla is located under the vast Myrdalsjokull ice cap. An eruption could cause widespread flooding and disrupt air traffic between Europe and North America. The last major eruption took place in 1918, and vulcanologists say a new blast is overdue. "So far there have been no signs of the reawakening of the Katla volcano, but a lot of things can still happen, so we are monitoring it quite closely," Einarsson said.
Yes kewel pics...thanks...
Anytime! &;-)
amazing pics, i have a bunch of friends heading over this weekend for a meeting, they are all scrambling.
I hope they're safe, where are they coming from, if I may ask?
from all over the US. here's another photo from NASA:
Very nice pic.
There's a whole slew of pics at:
Thanks. gotta feel sorry for those stranded.
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#3. To: Fred Mertz, ALL (#1)
#5. To: Murron (#3)
#7. To: war (#5)
Yes kewel pics...thanks...
#11. To: Murron (#7)
#13. To: go65 (#11)
i have a bunch of friends heading over this weekend for a meeting, they are all scrambling.
#14. To: Murron (#13)
I hope they're safe, where are they coming from, if I may ask?
#17. To: go65 (#14)
#29. To: Badeye, murron (#17)
(Edited)
Very nice pic.
#30. To: go65 (#29)
Replies to Comment # 30.
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