Increased seismic activity in Santorini causes evacuation of thousands of people and alerts authorities

Nearly 9,000 people have abandoned the Greek island of Santorini in response to a series of earthquakes, some reaching a magnitude of up to 4.8, which have shaken the archipelago of the cycled in recent days. The Greek government has deployed emergency equipment as a preventive measure.

During the early morning and the morning of this Tuesday, more than 50 earthquakes were recorded in the maritime zone between the islands of Santorini and Amorgos. This seismic activity follows a swarm of more than 600 tremors that began on January 24, keeping the authorities on a maximum alert.

The Athens Geodynamic Institute reported that at 8:06 am (local time) there was a tremor of magnitude 4.8 to 18 kilometers southwest of amorgos, followed one hour later by another of 4.7 that shook amorgos, Santorini, iOS and Ánafes.

As a precautionary measure, the government has ordered the closure of schools in these four islands until next Friday. In at least nine other islands of the archipelago, where the tremors also felt, the classes were suspended today.

Since Monday, the island of Santorini, with a population of approximately 25,000 inhabitants and an important tourist destination, has experienced large traffic congestions on the routes to the port and the airport, while residents and tourists tried to evacuate the island.

Both aircraft and ferris that left Santorini arrived in completely full Athens, while a large crowd waited at the port during the early morning to board any vessel available to the Greek capital.

The Greek prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, called on the inhabitants of the islands and assured that the authorities are «managing a very intense geological phenomenon.»

Special firefighters have been sent to the island as a precautionary measure, although so far no major damage have been reported, except some landslides in the island’s boiler.

Experts point out that recent seismic activity is not related to the Santorini volcano, but to underwater failures in the region. However, they cannot predict whether the situation will get worse or stabilized.

It is known that these five failures, each of more than 20 kilometers in length, have the potential to generate earthquakes of up to magnitude 7.3, such as the one that occurred near Amorgos in 1956, which triggered a 30 -meter tsunami that claimed life of 53 people.

Since Monday, the epicenters of the tremors have moved to the east, moving away from Santorini and approaching the island of Amorgos, which has a population of around 2,000 inhabitants and a rocky soil that reduces the risk.

This phenomenon that affects the cycles is classified as a seismic swarm, different from the earthquakes followed by replicas, since a main earthquake is not identified in the sequence of tremors.

The Natural Disaster Management professor, Effthimis Lekkas, said Tuesday that the frequency of tremors has increased in recent days and that this phenomenon could persist «several more days, perhaps even weeks.»