How to Prepare for the Impossible: Family Preparedness in Iceland

Iceland is one of the most active volcanic regions on Earth, where almost all types of volcanic and geothermal activity can be found. The volcanism in Iceland is attributed to the combination of the Iceland plume hotspot activity and the Mid-Atlantic Ridge activity. Furthermore, earthquakes are frequent due to the ridge activities, most often small but can be up to 6+ on the Richter Scale. Land- and snowslides are also quite frequent as well as flood and extreme weathers, including snowstorms. In 2023 the village of Grindavik was evacuated due to earthquakes followed by volcano eruptions close to the village and evacuations due to danger of snow- or landslides are not uncommon. Thus, Icelandic families due face many challenges in terms of natural disasters. The Emergency Management has also made contingency plans for man-made and technical disasters of different kinds.

This paper asks how families in the country are prepared for disasters? Do they have contingency plans that have been formally discussed by the family or is there some kind of an agreement on how to prepare for eventual disasters? The Disaster Management in Iceland expects families and household to hold certain standard when it comes to level of preparedness but repeated surveys, that have been conducted by the authors among representative sample of people living in Iceland, shows that families are not well prepared despite the encouragement to do so. In the paper we also discuss if the level of preparedness has increased after the most recent disaster in Grindavik in 2023 and if there are differences between families due to socio-economic status or where they live.