“We fear the iceberg could calve and send a flood towards the village,” Lina Davidsen, a security chief at the Greenland police, told Danish news agency Ritzau on Friday.

The settlement in northwestern Greenland has 169 inhabitants, but only those living closest to the iceberg have been evacuated, Ritzau reported.

“The iceberg is still near the village and the police are now discussing what do to next,” Kunuk Frediksen, a police chief in the Danish autonomous territory, told AFP.

Susanne K. Eliassen, a member of the village council, told the local newspaper Sermitsiaq that it was not unusual for large icebergs to be seen close to Innaarsuit.

“But this iceberg is the biggest we have seen… and there are cracks and holes that make us fear it can calve anytime,” she said, adding that the village’s power station and fuel tanks are close to the shore.

“Nobody is staying unnecessarily close to the beach and all children have been told to stay in areas that are high up,” Eliassen added.

The incident comes weeks after scientists at New York University shot and released a video of a massive iceberg breaking free from a glacier in eastern Greenland in June.

An expert warned that extreme iceberg events will become more frequent.

“Iceberg production in Greenland has been increasing in the past 100 years as climate change has become stronger,” William Colgan, senior researcher at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, told AFP.

He said the rising number of icebergs are in turn “increasing the tsunami hazards” which occur when they break away from a glacier and trigger a tidal wave.

Last year, four people died and 11 were injured after an earthquake sparked a tsunami off another island settlement called Nuugaatsiaq, sending several houses crashing into the sea.

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The recent calving of a large iceberg from a southern Chilean glacier threatens local ship navigation and could result in flooding for coastal communities, experts said.

An iceberg measuring some 350 by 380 meters (1,150 by 1,250 feet) broke from the Grey glacier in far southern Chile in late November.

The size of the break surprised local scientists who monitor the glacier.

“Events like this are part of a short-term irreversible tendency” due to rising global temperatures, said Raul Cordero, a climate change expert at the Universidad de Santiago.

The iceberg now seems like a large chunk of ice, “but it will become a threat” since it will move out to sea and break up into smaller pieces, said Ricardo Jana, a glaciologist at the Chilean National Antarctic Institute.

Given its size, the smaller icebergs likely to break off can create problems for area navigation, Jana said.

The icebergs will also contribute to a rise in the sea level, “putting coastal communities at risk for possible flooding,” Jana said.

The Grey glacier is located at the Torres del Paine National Park, some 3,200 kilometers (2,000 miles) south of the capital Santiago.

Over the past 30 years the glacier — now measuring some 270 square kilometers — has lost about two square kilometers of ice.

A Chilean flag flutters in the wind near the Grey glacier at the Torres del Paine National Park in far southern Chile

The glacier is part of the Southern Patagonia Ice Fields, the third largest land-based ice field after Antarctica and Greenland. The Ice Fields straddle southern Chile and Argentina.

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