Icelanders race to repair pipelines after volcano damage

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00:00 With the eruption of the Sint Núcear crater over for now, Icelandic authorities got to

00:05 work to repair pipelines destroyed by the lava flows and restore hot water to 30,000

00:11 people in the Reykjanes peninsula.

00:13 One of the operations that we were in, we were building a new road on top of quite new

00:20 lava and we were building new hot water pipe 600 meters long across the lava. We completed

00:31 that yesterday and are now starting to deliver hot water to the communities again.

00:39 Iceland has long harnessed its extensive volcanic systems for energy. 90% of Icelanders rely

00:45 on geothermal power for heating. A lack of hot water since supplies got disrupted has

00:51 forced residents in the affected area to find backup solutions.

00:55 Despite the speedy restoration, Iceland's Prime Minister Katrin Jakobsdóttir says Iceland

01:01 will need to rethink its energy strategy.

01:05 But we need to think about the future. We have been using this area for geothermal heating

01:11 and electricity production here for decades. With the whole area being so eruptive, we

01:20 need to really map out how we see the next years and decades.

01:26 The eruption was the third since December at the volcano about 50 kilometers south of

01:31 Reykjavik. The Icelandic Meteorological Institute says another eruption may be imminent in the

01:36 coming days.

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