Two houses in the rural Hvalfjarðarsveit region in West Iceland were evacuated for safety reasons yesterday before the Special Forces of the National Commissioner of the Icelandic Police and Bomb Squad of the Icelandic Coast Guard removed explosives from a container outside one of the houses.

Archive photo: Páll Stefánsson/Iceland Review.

They rushed to the scene after being notified of the around 300 kilos of dynamite and other explosives being kept in the container. The explosives had become damp, which makes them particularly dangerous, according to visir.is.

Removing and eliminating the explosives proved successful. The police in Borgarnes are now investigating the incident.

In other explosive news on visir.is, firefighters believe a firebomb was narrowly avoided after a house in Hrafnagil outside Akureyri caught fire yesterday.

The paneling in the ceiling had caught fire because of a pipe from a fireplace. The fire was quickly extinguished but afterwards it turned out that significant heat and smoke remained in the attic, creating conditions for a firebomb.

An explosion was likely prevented by a neighbor, who had sprayed water onto the roof of the house with a gardening hose, cooling it somewhat, before the fire brigade arrived.

ESA