Week Eight

Week Eight

Eruption on Mount Snowdown

                Picture of the mountain blowing ash, from @LlanberisSherpa on Twitter

Mount Snowdon has erupted around 12pm today following the largest earthquake in the UK since 1931.

North Wales Police has confirmed 16 deaths, and the figure is likely to rise.

Snowdonia National Park has been deemed off-limits to all persons by North Wales Fire and Rescue Service due to extreme danger from molten rock flowing through the cracks on Mount Snowdon.

The earthquake, with a magnitude of 5.7 on the Richter scale was confirmed by the British Geological Society as one of the most powerful earthquakes in the history of the UK.

North Wales Police are also confirming reports of widespread damage to buildings and infrastructure in Porthmadog, Penrhyndeudraeth, Beddgelert, Criccieth and Llanberis.

Pop-up hospitals have been set up in the Tesco Superstore Car Park in Porthmadog, and at Llaberis Tourist Information Center.

A Sea King helicopter has been dispatched from RAF Valley in Anglesey to assist rescue missions of residents and hikers on the mountain. So far 5 injured people have been lifted to Ysbyty Gwynedd in Bangor.

Chief Constable Mike Porkins has expressed North Wales Police are “very concerned for those who may be on the mountains”, he said “we are hearing reports of landslides and tumbling rocks”.

The molten rock is slow-moving, but is 0.7 miles from Llanberis and expected to arrive at 7pm tonight.

                Magma flowing down the mountain.

Picture by Wagner T. Cassimiro / Hefin Owen (CC BY-SA 2.0) for Dyffryn Ogwen Montain Rescue Team

Due to the danger, the A4086 into Llanberis and the A4085 between Beddgelert and Waunfawr have been closed. 

Motorists are advised to stay away from the area.

Chief Constable Roger Williams, of North Wales Police, extends “deepest condolences to those who are suffering”.

The Civil Aviation Society has confirmed that the UK airspace will not be closed due to the eruption; the ash cloud from the mountain will not affect flights.

Meanwhile, Caernarfon and Anglesey Airports are advised to keep planes grounded until the density of the ash in the area is ascertained.

Eyewitness Jane Beaulieu, a local resident, describes the scene.

“We felt the ground shift but it didn’t shake” she says, “Most of my neighbours are fine and have walked down to the school where they’ve opened up a little shelter. We’ve been told to stay put and not to go back to collect things”.

Owner of local Royal Oak Hotel, Charles Humphries says “the entire building shook, and quite a few glasses and decorations crashed off the shelves. There’s quite a mess in there.”

Humphries also confirms one person was injured in the earthquake by falling rocks.

Prime Minister David Cameron has also offered his condolences to the families of those killed or injured in the incident.

British Geological Survey Seismologist Caradoc Evans, from Pwllheli, says there are two possible reasons for the area being subject of large earthquakes in the past.

“The first is they are knock-on effects of pressure on the edge of the Atlantic Ridge” he says, “the other possible solution is that north Wales was under a sheet of ice about a mile thick some 30,000 years ago, which formed the Snowdonia mountains. Now that the ice has melted the terrain is rising, and this is what is causing the earthquakes.”
Evans has also commented that “the area has now seen more significant earthquakes over the past decades than any other part of the British Isles”.

The last recorded earthquake of this size in the UK was the 7^th June, 1931, in Dogger Bank.

This earthquake has been confirmed as the most powerful on the UK mainland since Canterbury in 1382 by the British Geological Survey.


More on this story as it unfolds.