The Aftermath
http://www.ncpnet.force9.co.uk/Iceland/pres0005.htm
The precise effects of the cooling efforts are not known. One lava flow stopped yards short of blocking the harbor entrance, had it not been cooled the harbor likely would have been lost. By cooling and diverting the lava in some area the flow pushed farther into other areas. Once people start to interfere with an event like the eruption and lava flow, the chain of events becomes complicated. In Hawaii and in Italy there have been legal problems related to trying to divert lava. The lava still flows somewhere, often towards a neighbor’s house. In Vestmannaeyjar the existence of the entire town was at stake and no one complained about the results. After the eruption the harbor had been improved and the island had been enlarged by about 20 percent. After the eruption stopped a system to collect the heat from the cooling lava was constructed and used to heat the town. Slightly more than half of the town original 5000 residents returned after the eruption, in a few years the population had grown to close to what it was before the eruption. There was an extensive effort to rebuild the houses that were lost and to restore the beauty of the island. The ash and tephra was cleared from the town and from many of the surrounding hillsides. The inhabitants said they wanted their island to be green again.
http://notendur.centrum.is/~edda/heimaey1.html